arXiv:2603.22332cs.LGcs.AI2026-03被引 2

LLM在表格数据补全中表现优异,但依赖语义而非统计规律。

Large Language Models for Missing Data Imputation: Understanding Behavior, Hallucination Effects, and Control Mechanisms

  • 用零样本提示工程对比5个主流LLM与6种传统方法。
  • 真实数据上Gemini和Claude优于传统方法,合成数据上反之。
  • 优点是语义理解强,缺点是耗时贵,适合复杂数据场景。

数据补全是处理现实世界数据集中缺失值的核心技术。尽管已有进展,基于大语言模型的补全研究仍受限于可扩展性挑战、跨模型比较不足以及在小规模或领域特定数据集上的评估。此外,实验协议不统一及对缺失机制(MCAR、MAR、MNAR)处理不一致,阻碍了系统性基准测试。本文通过零样本提示工程方法,系统评估了大语言模型在表格数据补全中的鲁棒性。构建了一个涵盖29个数据集(含9个合成数据集)的全面基准,覆盖高达20%缺失率的MCAR、MAR和MNAR机制。结果表明,领先LLM如Gemini 3.0 Flash和Claude 4.5 Sonnet在真实开源数据集上显著优于传统方法,但该优势与其预训练中学习到的领域模式密切相关。而在合成数据集上,传统方法如MICE表现更优,说明LLM有效性源于语义上下文而非纯统计重建。此外,发现虽补全质量高,但计算时间和成本显著增加。本研究提供大规模对比分析,确立了LLM作为复杂表格数据语义驱动补全器的潜力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Data imputation is a cornerstone technique for handling missing values in real-world datasets, which are often plagued by missingness. Despite recent progress, prior studies on Large Language Models-based imputation remain limited by scalability challenges, restricted cross-model comparisons, and evaluations conducted on small or domain-specific datasets. Furthermore, heterogeneous experimental protocols and inconsistent treatment of missingness mechanisms (MCAR, MAR, and MNAR) hinder systematic benchmarking across methods. This work investigates the robustness of Large Language Models for missing data imputation in tabular datasets using a zero-shot prompt engineering approach. To this end, we present a comprehensive benchmarking study comparing five widely used LLMs against six state-of-the-art imputation baselines. The experimental design evaluates these methods across 29 datasets (including nine synthetic datasets) under MCAR, MAR, and MNAR mechanisms, with missing rates of up to 20\%. The results demonstrate that leading LLMs, particularly Gemini 3.0 Flash and Claude 4.5 Sonnet, consistently achieve superior performance on real-world open-source datasets compared to traditional methods. However, this advantage appears to be closely tied to the models' prior exposure to domain-specific patterns learned during pre-training on internet-scale corpora. In contrast, on synthetic datasets, traditional methods such as MICE outperform LLMs, suggesting that LLM effectiveness is driven by semantic context rather than purely statistical reconstruction. Furthermore, we identify a clear trade-off: while LLMs excel in imputation quality, they incur significantly higher computational time and monetary costs. Overall, this study provides a large-scale comparative analysis, positioning LLMs as promising semantics-driven imputers for complex tabular data.

数据补全大模型表格数据语义建模

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