用三个专精小模型+智能选择,低成本高精度填补表格缺失值。
Auto-Fill: Learning to Predict Missing Values Accurately with Specialist Language Models

- 分三类小模型分别专精常识、文本推理和代码推理。
- 在2200张真实表格上准确率超主流大模型,成本不足1%。
- 动态选最可信模型或放弃预测,避免胡编乱造。
表格中缺失值预测是数据清洗的基础问题。尽管当前先进推理模型通过跨行列表达全局推理,在预测缺失值方面展现出巨大潜力,但其部署成本高昂且常过度自信,导致生成幻觉或假阳性结果。本文观察到高精度缺失值预测需融合三大能力:(1) 世界常识,(2) 文本推理,(3) 代码推理。我们系统探索了如何组合这些能力,提出Auto-Fill方法:对三个专精的小语言模型(SLMs)进行后训练,每类模型分别优化一种能力。设计了一种校准集成机制,动态选择最自信的专家模型或选择不预测,以保障高精度。在11个基准、2200张来自多领域的真实表格上进行大量实验表明,Auto-Fill相比前沿模型(如o3-pro、Gemini 3 Pro、DeepSeek R1)取得更优准确率,同时运行成本低于其1%。结果凸显了专业化与校准弃权在表格数据领域的有效性。Auto-Fill已公开于https://github.com/lyrain2001/auto-fill。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Predicting missing cell values in tabular data is a fundamental problem in data cleaning. While state-of-the-art reasoning models show great promise in predicting missing values in tables, by reasoning holistically across rows and columns, they are costly to deploy at scale and tend to be overconfident, often generating hallucinated or false-positive predictions. In this paper, we observe that achieving high-precision missing-value prediction in tables requires a distinct combination of three capabilities: (1) world knowledge, (2) text-based reasoning, and (3) code-based reasoning. We systematically explore design choices for combining these capabilities, and propose an Auto-Fill approach that post-trains three specialist small language models (SLMs), each optimized for one capability. We develop a calibrated ensemble mechanism that either dynamically selects the most confident specialist or abstains, ensuring high accuracy. Extensive experiments on 11 benchmarks with 2200 real tables drawn from diverse domains show that Auto-Fill achieves superior accuracy compared to state-of-the-art reasoning models (e.g., o3-pro, Gemini 3 Pro, and DeepSeek R1), while operating at a fraction (less than 1%) of the cost of these frontier models. Our results highlight the effectiveness of specialization and calibrated abstention in the important domain of tabular data. Auto-Fill is publicly available at https://github.com/lyrain2001/auto-fill.
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