TabM: Advancing Tabular Deep Learning with Parameter-Efficient Ensembling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gorishniy, Yury, Kotelnikov, Akim, Babenko, Artem
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gorishniy, Yury
Kotelnikov, Akim
Babenko, Artem
author_facet Gorishniy, Yury
Kotelnikov, Akim
Babenko, Artem
contents Deep learning architectures for supervised learning on tabular data range from simple multilayer perceptrons (MLP) to sophisticated Transformers and retrieval-augmented methods. This study highlights a major, yet so far overlooked opportunity for designing substantially better MLP-based tabular architectures. Namely, our new model TabM relies on efficient ensembling, where one TabM efficiently imitates an ensemble of MLPs and produces multiple predictions per object. Compared to a traditional deep ensemble, in TabM, the underlying implicit MLPs are trained simultaneously, and (by default) share most of their parameters, which results in significantly better performance and efficiency. Using TabM as a new baseline, we perform a large-scale evaluation of tabular DL architectures on public benchmarks in terms of both task performance and efficiency, which renders the landscape of tabular DL in a new light. Generally, we show that MLPs, including TabM, form a line of stronger and more practical models compared to attention- and retrieval-based architectures. In particular, we find that TabM demonstrates the best performance among tabular DL models. Then, we conduct an empirical analysis on the ensemble-like nature of TabM. We observe that the multiple predictions of TabM are weak individually, but powerful collectively. Overall, our work brings an impactful technique to tabular DL and advances the performance-efficiency trade-off with TabM -- a simple and powerful baseline for researchers and practitioners.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_24210
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TabM: Advancing Tabular Deep Learning with Parameter-Efficient Ensembling
Gorishniy, Yury
Kotelnikov, Akim
Babenko, Artem
Machine Learning
Deep learning architectures for supervised learning on tabular data range from simple multilayer perceptrons (MLP) to sophisticated Transformers and retrieval-augmented methods. This study highlights a major, yet so far overlooked opportunity for designing substantially better MLP-based tabular architectures. Namely, our new model TabM relies on efficient ensembling, where one TabM efficiently imitates an ensemble of MLPs and produces multiple predictions per object. Compared to a traditional deep ensemble, in TabM, the underlying implicit MLPs are trained simultaneously, and (by default) share most of their parameters, which results in significantly better performance and efficiency. Using TabM as a new baseline, we perform a large-scale evaluation of tabular DL architectures on public benchmarks in terms of both task performance and efficiency, which renders the landscape of tabular DL in a new light. Generally, we show that MLPs, including TabM, form a line of stronger and more practical models compared to attention- and retrieval-based architectures. In particular, we find that TabM demonstrates the best performance among tabular DL models. Then, we conduct an empirical analysis on the ensemble-like nature of TabM. We observe that the multiple predictions of TabM are weak individually, but powerful collectively. Overall, our work brings an impactful technique to tabular DL and advances the performance-efficiency trade-off with TabM -- a simple and powerful baseline for researchers and practitioners.
title TabM: Advancing Tabular Deep Learning with Parameter-Efficient Ensembling
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.24210