提出新评估框架,精准衡量表格生成模型对数据结构的掌握程度。
How Well Does Your Tabular Generator Learn the Structure of Tabular Data?
- 以因果结构对齐为核心,构建结构保真度评估标准
- 在7个数据集上验证,现有生成模型普遍忽视结构学习
- 适合关注表格生成质量与结构一致性研究者
异构表格数据因其与图像、文本等同质模态截然不同的底层结构,在生成建模中面临独特挑战。尽管已有研究尝试将同质模态的成功经验迁移至表格领域,但如何有效定义表格生成器仍是开放问题。主要原因在于,继承自其他模态的评估指标往往无法充分检验生成模型是否真正捕捉或利用了表格数据中的独特结构信息。本文系统分析了现有评估框架的局限性,提出新型评估基准TabStruct,将结构保真度作为核心评价维度。具体而言,TabStruct通过对比真实与合成数据间的因果结构对齐程度,直接衡量生成模型对表格数据结构的学习效果。在涵盖八类生成器、七组具备专家验证因果图结构的数据集上开展的广泛实验表明,结构保真度可提供任务无关、领域无关的评估维度。研究结果凸显了表格数据结构的重要性,并为开发更高效、鲁棒的表格生成模型提供了实践指导。代码已开源:https://github.com/SilenceX12138/TabStruct。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Heterogeneous tabular data poses unique challenges in generative modelling due to its fundamentally different underlying data structure compared to homogeneous modalities, such as images and text. Although previous research has sought to adapt the successes of generative modelling in homogeneous modalities to the tabular domain, defining an effective generator for tabular data remains an open problem. One major reason is that the evaluation criteria inherited from other modalities often fail to adequately assess whether tabular generative models effectively capture or utilise the unique structural information encoded in tabular data. In this paper, we carefully examine the limitations of the prevailing evaluation framework and introduce $\textbf{TabStruct}$, a novel evaluation benchmark that positions structural fidelity as a core evaluation dimension. Specifically, TabStruct evaluates the alignment of causal structures in real and synthetic data, providing a direct measure of how effectively tabular generative models learn the structure of tabular data. Through extensive experiments using generators from eight categories on seven datasets with expert-validated causal graphical structures, we show that structural fidelity offers a task-independent, domain-agnostic evaluation dimension. Our findings highlight the importance of tabular data structure and offer practical guidance for developing more effective and robust tabular generative models. Code is available at https://github.com/SilenceX12138/TabStruct.
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