arXiv:2604.20216cs.CL2026-04ACL

用专属分位数标记直接预测分布,提升生成精度与局部适应性。

Text-to-Distribution Prediction with Quantile Tokens and Neighbor Context

  • 引入专用分位数标记,通过自注意力实现输入到每个分位数的直接路径
  • 结合相似样本上下文,使预测结果在局部数据中更有依据,降低4%的MAPE
  • 首次理论分析分位数损失函数,适合需要精准分布预测的应用场景

基于大模型的文本回归在许多应用中需要预测完整的条件分布而非单一数值。本文研究基于经验分位数监督的分布回归,其中每个输入对应多个观测分位数,目标分布以密集分位数网格表示。现有方法存在两个关键缺陷:分布估计缺乏局部依据,且依赖共享表示形成输入与分位数输出间的间接瓶颈。为此,我们提出量化分位数标记回归(Quantile Token Regression),据我们所知是首个将专用分位数标记插入输入序列的工作,通过自注意力实现每个分位数的直接输入-输出通路。进一步地,通过检索语义相似的邻近实例及其经验分布,为预测提供局部证据。同时,本文首次对分位数回归损失函数进行理论分析,阐明各目标函数优化的具体分布特性。在Inside Airbnb和StackSample基准数据集上,使用1.7B至14B参数的LLM进行实验,结果显示加入邻居信息的分位数标记方法持续优于基线,平均降低约4% MAPE、预测区间缩小2倍,尤其在小规模和高难度数据集上表现更优,生成的分布更加尖锐且准确。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Many applications of LLM-based text regression require predicting a full conditional distribution rather than a single point value. We study distributional regression under empirical-quantile supervision, where each input is paired with multiple observed quantile outcomes, and the target distribution is represented by a dense grid of quantiles. We address two key limitations of current approaches: the lack of local grounding for distribution estimates, and the reliance on shared representations that create an indirect bottleneck between inputs and quantile outputs. In this paper, we introduce Quantile Token Regression, which, to our knowledge, is the first work to insert dedicated quantile tokens into the input sequence, enabling direct input-output pathways for each quantile through self-attention. We further augment these quantile tokens with retrieval, incorporating semantically similar neighbor instances and their empirical distributions to ground predictions with local evidence from similar instances. We also provide the first theoretical analysis of loss functions for quantile regression, clarifying which distributional objectives each optimizes. Experiments on the Inside Airbnb and StackSample benchmark datasets with LLMs ranging from 1.7B to 14B parameters show that quantile tokens with neighbors consistently outperform baselines (~4 points lower MAPE and 2x narrower prediction intervals), with especially large gains on smaller and more challenging datasets where quantile tokens produce substantially sharper and more accurate distributions.

分布预测分位数回归大模型

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