A Survey on Data Contamination for Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Cheng, Yuxing, Chang, Yi, Wu, Yuan
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Cheng, Yuxing
Chang, Yi
Wu, Yuan
author_facet Cheng, Yuxing
Chang, Yi
Wu, Yuan
contents Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant progress in various areas, such as text generation and code synthesis. However, the reliability of performance evaluation has come under scrutiny due to data contamination-the unintended overlap between training and test datasets. This overlap has the potential to artificially inflate model performance, as LLMs are typically trained on extensive datasets scraped from publicly available sources. These datasets often inadvertently overlap with the benchmarks used for evaluation, leading to an overestimation of the models' true generalization capabilities. In this paper, we first examine the definition and impacts of data contamination. Secondly, we review methods for contamination-free evaluation, focusing on three strategies: data updating-based methods, data rewriting-based methods, and prevention-based methods. Specifically, we highlight dynamic benchmarks and LLM-driven evaluation methods. Finally, we categorize contamination detecting methods based on model information dependency: white-Box, gray-Box, and black-Box detection approaches. Our survey highlights the requirements for more rigorous evaluation protocols and proposes future directions for addressing data contamination challenges.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_14425
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Survey on Data Contamination for Large Language Models
Cheng, Yuxing
Chang, Yi
Wu, Yuan
Computation and Language
Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant progress in various areas, such as text generation and code synthesis. However, the reliability of performance evaluation has come under scrutiny due to data contamination-the unintended overlap between training and test datasets. This overlap has the potential to artificially inflate model performance, as LLMs are typically trained on extensive datasets scraped from publicly available sources. These datasets often inadvertently overlap with the benchmarks used for evaluation, leading to an overestimation of the models' true generalization capabilities. In this paper, we first examine the definition and impacts of data contamination. Secondly, we review methods for contamination-free evaluation, focusing on three strategies: data updating-based methods, data rewriting-based methods, and prevention-based methods. Specifically, we highlight dynamic benchmarks and LLM-driven evaluation methods. Finally, we categorize contamination detecting methods based on model information dependency: white-Box, gray-Box, and black-Box detection approaches. Our survey highlights the requirements for more rigorous evaluation protocols and proposes future directions for addressing data contamination challenges.
title A Survey on Data Contamination for Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14425