When TableQA Meets Noise: A Dual Denoising Framework for Complex Questions and Large-scale Tables

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ye, Shenghao, Guo, Yu, Jin, Dong, Shen, Yikai, Hou, Yunpeng, Chen, Shuangwu, Yang, Jian, Jiang, Xiaofeng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866914578509594624
author Ye, Shenghao
Guo, Yu
Jin, Dong
Shen, Yikai
Hou, Yunpeng
Chen, Shuangwu
Yang, Jian
Jiang, Xiaofeng
author_facet Ye, Shenghao
Guo, Yu
Jin, Dong
Shen, Yikai
Hou, Yunpeng
Chen, Shuangwu
Yang, Jian
Jiang, Xiaofeng
contents Table question answering (TableQA) is a fundamental task in natural language processing (NLP). The strong reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have brought significant advances in this field. However, as real-world applications involve increasingly complex questions and larger tables, substantial noisy data is introduced, which severely degrades reasoning performance. To address this challenge, we focus on improving two core capabilities: Relevance Filtering, which identifies and retains information truly relevant to reasoning, and Table Pruning, which reduces table size while preserving essential content. Based on these principles, we propose EnoTab, a dual denoising framework for complex questions and large-scale tables. Specifically, we first perform Evidence-based Question Denoising by decomposing the question into minimal semantic units and filtering out those irrelevant to answer reasoning based on consistency and usability criteria. Then, we propose Evidence Tree-guided Table Denoising, which constructs an explicit and transparent table pruning path to remove irrelevant data step by step. At each pruning step, we observe the intermediate state of the table and apply a post-order node rollback mechanism to handle abnormal table states, ultimately producing a highly reliable sub-table for final answer reasoning. Finally, extensive experiments show that EnoTab achieves outstanding performance on TableQA tasks with complex questions and large-scale tables, confirming its effectiveness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17680
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle When TableQA Meets Noise: A Dual Denoising Framework for Complex Questions and Large-scale Tables
Ye, Shenghao
Guo, Yu
Jin, Dong
Shen, Yikai
Hou, Yunpeng
Chen, Shuangwu
Yang, Jian
Jiang, Xiaofeng
Computation and Language
Table question answering (TableQA) is a fundamental task in natural language processing (NLP). The strong reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have brought significant advances in this field. However, as real-world applications involve increasingly complex questions and larger tables, substantial noisy data is introduced, which severely degrades reasoning performance. To address this challenge, we focus on improving two core capabilities: Relevance Filtering, which identifies and retains information truly relevant to reasoning, and Table Pruning, which reduces table size while preserving essential content. Based on these principles, we propose EnoTab, a dual denoising framework for complex questions and large-scale tables. Specifically, we first perform Evidence-based Question Denoising by decomposing the question into minimal semantic units and filtering out those irrelevant to answer reasoning based on consistency and usability criteria. Then, we propose Evidence Tree-guided Table Denoising, which constructs an explicit and transparent table pruning path to remove irrelevant data step by step. At each pruning step, we observe the intermediate state of the table and apply a post-order node rollback mechanism to handle abnormal table states, ultimately producing a highly reliable sub-table for final answer reasoning. Finally, extensive experiments show that EnoTab achieves outstanding performance on TableQA tasks with complex questions and large-scale tables, confirming its effectiveness.
title When TableQA Meets Noise: A Dual Denoising Framework for Complex Questions and Large-scale Tables
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17680