What does unbias mean?
Unbias is a transitive verb meaning to remove bias, prejudice, or one-sided influence from a person, decision, process, or body of information. It is especially common in discussions of fair assessment, mediation, research, and the design or correction of statistical and artificial-intelligence systems. In institutional and political language, it can imply that a supposedly neutral practice has been affected by hidden preferences and therefore requires correction. The word describes an active effort rather than simply the absence of prejudice. For the neutral state itself, unbiased is normally used as an adjective, unbiasedness names the quality, and unbiasedly describes conduct performed without bias. Because bias can be embedded in data, models, questions, or selection criteria, unbias also has a technical role in data science and machine learning. Even in that context, it should not suggest that human judgment has disappeared; rather, it identifies a process for recognizing and reducing systematic influence.
verbTo remove bias, prejudice, or one-sided influence from a person, decision, process, or body of information.
- To remove bias, prejudice, or one-sided influence from a person, decision, process, or dataset.
"The committee revised its questions to unbias the selection process."
"The committee revised its questions to unbias the selection process."
"The engineer tested and retrained the model to unbias its predictions."
Unbias puts a remarkably literal task on the table: remove the invisible hand reaching for the scale.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does unbias come from?
Unbias was formed in English in the early 19th century by combining the prefix un- with bias. Bias was borrowed from French biais, originally referring to an oblique line or direction, although the ultimate origin of the French word is uncertain. In figurative use, the verb came to mean freeing a person, process, or judgment from prejudice or one-sided influence.
Related word forms
How unbias is actually used
The word is formal and usually transitive. The hyphenated form de-bias is also common, particularly in data science, statistics, and discussions of algorithmic fairness. It implies active correction and should not be used merely to assert that a result is probably fair.
Easily confused with unbias
Unbias is a verb describing the act of removing bias, whereas unbiased is an adjective describing something that is already impartial.