让人类和大模型协作做表格数据特征工程,提升效果并减轻负担
Human-LLM Collaborative Feature Engineering for Tabular Data
- 拆分生成与选择:大模型只提建议,人类反馈辅助判断优劣
- 实测在多个真实数据集上提升特征工程效果,减少无效尝试
- 适合需要高质量特征但人力有限的数据科学家
大型语言模型(LLMs)被用于自动化表格学习中的特征工程。给定任务信息后,LLMs 可提出多样化的特征转换操作以提升下游模型性能。然而,现有方法通常将 LLM 视为黑箱优化器,仅凭内部启发式进行操作生成与选择,缺乏对操作效用的校准估计,导致重复探索低收益操作,且无系统性优先策略。本文提出一种人-大模型协同的表格特征工程框架。我们首先解耦操作生成与选择过程:仅由大模型生成候选操作,选择则通过显式建模每个操作的效用与不确定性来指导。由于早期阶段效用估计困难,框架设计了选择性机制,主动获取人类专家偏好反馈,比较哪些操作更有效,从而帮助识别更具潜力的方向。在合成研究与真实用户研究中均验证,该框架在多种表格数据集上提升了特征工程性能,并显著降低了用户的认知负担。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to automate feature engineering in tabular learning. Given task-specific information, LLMs can propose diverse feature transformation operations to enhance downstream model performance. However, current approaches typically assign the LLM as a black-box optimizer, responsible for both proposing and selecting operations based solely on its internal heuristics, which often lack calibrated estimations of operation utility and consequently lead to repeated exploration of low-yield operations without a principled strategy for prioritizing promising directions. In this paper, we propose a human-LLM collaborative feature engineering framework for tabular learning. We begin by decoupling the transformation operation proposal and selection processes, where LLMs are used solely to generate operation candidates, while the selection is guided by explicitly modeling the utility and uncertainty of each proposed operation. Since accurate utility estimation can be difficult especially in the early rounds of feature engineering, we design a mechanism within the framework that selectively elicits and incorporates human expert preference feedback, comparing which operations are more promising, into the selection process to help identify more effective operations. Our evaluations on both the synthetic study and the real user study demonstrate that the proposed framework improves feature engineering performance across a variety of tabular datasets and reduces users' cognitive load during the feature engineering process.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。