用强化学习优化LLM生成特征变换,提升预测性能与多样性
Evolving Demonstration Optimization for Chain-of-Thought Feature Transformation
- 通过强化学习演化高质量特征变换路径,构建可更新的经验库
- 在多个表格数据集上超越经典与LLM基线方法,稳定提升性能
- 适合需要高效特征工程的机器学习研究者与工程师使用
特征变换(FT)是提升下游预测性能的核心数据驱动任务。然而,由于特征操作组合空间庞大,有效变换的发现仍具挑战性。现有方法依赖离散搜索或潜在生成,常受限于样本效率低、无效候选多、重复生成及覆盖范围有限。大语言模型(LLMs)具备生成有效变换的强先验,但当前基于LLM的FT方法多依赖静态示例,导致多样性差、输出冗余且与下游目标对齐不足。本文提出一个闭环优化框架,通过演化轨迹级经验来优化LLM驱动的特征变换。从强化学习探索出的高性能特征变换序列出发,构建并持续更新经过下游任务验证的变换轨迹经验库,并采用多样性感知选择器结合思维链(Chain-of-Thought)形成上下文,引导特征生成向更高性能方向演进。在多种表格基准上的实验表明,该方法优于经典与基于LLM的基线,且比一次性生成更稳定。框架适用于API与开源LLMs,在不同下游评估器下均保持鲁棒性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Feature Transformation (FT) is a core data-centric AI task that improves feature space quality to advance downstream predictive performance. However, discovering effective transformations remains challenging due to the large space of feature-operator combinations. Existing solutions rely on discrete search or latent generation, but they are frequently limited by sample inefficiency, invalid candidates, and redundant generations with limited coverage. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer strong priors for producing valid transformations, but current LLM-based FT methods typically rely on static demonstrations, resulting in limited diversity, redundant outputs, and weak alignment with downstream objectives. We propose a framework that optimizes context data for LLM-driven FT by evolving trajectory-level experiences in a closed loop. Starting from high-performing feature transportation sequences explored by reinforcement learning, we construct and continuously update an experience library of downstream task-verified transformation trajectories, and use a diversity-aware selector to form contexts along with a chain-of-thought and guide transformed feature generation toward higher performance. Experiments on diverse tabular benchmarks show that our method outperforms classical and LLM-based baselines and is more stable than one-shot generation. The framework generalizes across API-based and open-source LLMs and remains robust across downstream evaluators.
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