arXiv:2608.09617cs.LG2026-08被引 2

用强化学习生成可解释的公式,还能量化不确定性。

Bayesian Symbolic Regression with Entropic Reinforcement Learning

  • 用神经网络策略逐步构建表达式树,通过熵正则化实现高效搜索
  • 在Feynman数据集上生成短且可读性强的公式,预测精度高
  • 适合需要可解释性和不确定性的科学建模场景

符号回归旨在寻找描述目标变量与输入变量之间随机依赖关系的代数表达式。与固定模型结构的参数拟合不同,符号回归是在表达式空间中进行搜索,通常以抽象语法树形式表示,使用运算符库构建。该方法常用于自然科学研究中数据有限且噪声较大的场景。然而,仅寻找单一最优表达式无法捕捉对表达式的认知不确定性,这促使采用贝叶斯视角来量化不确定性,并引入自然先验约束搜索空间。本文提出ERRLESS(熵正则化强化学习表达式结构采样),一种基于最大熵强化学习的可扩展方法,用于从给定数据的表达式后验分布中采样。ERRLESS学习一个神经策略,通过逐步构建抽象语法树来生成表达式。收敛后,该策略可从后验分布中采样表达式。测试时,可通过策略的轨迹采样得到表达式。实验表明,ERRLESS在Feynman基准上表现优异,生成表达式简短且可读性强。此外,由ERRLESS近似得到的后验预测均值相比SMC基线达到更高的决定系数(R²),凸显了贝叶斯视角在符号回归中的优势。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Symbolic regression is the problem of finding an algebraic expression describing a stochastic dependence of a target variable on a set of inputs. Unlike forms of regression that fit parameters assuming a fixed model structure, symbolic regression is a search problem over the space of expressions, represented, for example, as abstract syntax trees using a library of operators. Symbolic regression is typically used in settings with limited, noisy data in the natural sciences. However, searching for a single best-fitting expression fails to capture the epistemic uncertainty about the expression, which motivates a Bayesian perspective that enables uncertainty quantification and specification of natural priors to constrain the search space. In this work, we propose ERRLESS (Entropy-Regularized Reinforcement Learning for Expression Structure Sampling), a scalable approach for sampling from the posterior distribution over expressions given data using maximum-entropy reinforcement learning. ERRLESS learns a neural policy that constructs expressions sequentially by building up their abstract syntax trees. At convergence, the policy samples expressions from the posterior. At test time, expressions can be sampled by rollouts of this policy. We demonstrate that ERRLESS achieves competitive results on the Feynman benchmark while producing short and interpretable expressions. Additionally, we demonstrate that the mean of the posterior predictive approximated by ERRLESS achieves a high coefficient of determination ($R^2$) compared to an SMC baseline, highlighting the benefits of the Bayesian perspective in symbolic regression.

符号回归强化学习贝叶斯推断可解释性

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。