Fibres of Failure: Classifying errors in predictive processes

We describe Fibres of Failure (FiFa), a method to classify failure modes of predictive processes using the Mapper algorithm from Topological Data Analysis. Our method uses Mapper to build a graph model of input data stratified by prediction error. Groupings found in high-error regions of the Mapper model then provide distinct failure modes of the predictive process. We demonstrate FiFa on misclassifications of MNIST images with added noise, and demonstrate two ways to use the failure mode classification: either to produce a correction layer that adjusts predictions by similarity to the failure modes; or to inspect members of the failure modes to illustrate and investigate what characterizes each failure mode.