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Autori principali: Lui, Kry Yik Chau, Chi, Cheng, Basu, Kishore, Cao, Yanshuai
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20631
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author Lui, Kry Yik Chau
Chi, Cheng
Basu, Kishore
Cao, Yanshuai
author_facet Lui, Kry Yik Chau
Chi, Cheng
Basu, Kishore
Cao, Yanshuai
contents Despite their dominance in vision and language, deep neural networks often underperform relative to tree-based models on tabular data. To bridge this gap, we incorporate five key inductive biases into deep learning: robustness to irrelevant features, axis alignment, localized irregularities, feature heterogeneity, and training stability. We propose \emph{LassoFlexNet}, an architecture that evaluates the linear and nonlinear marginal contribution of each input via Per-Feature Embeddings, and sparsely selects relevant variables using a Tied Group Lasso mechanism. Because these components introduce optimization challenges that destabilize standard proximal methods, we develop a \emph{Sequential Hierarchical Proximal Adaptive Gradient optimizer with exponential moving averages (EMA)} to ensure stable convergence. Across $52$ datasets from three benchmarks, LassoFlexNet matches or outperforms leading tree-based models, achieving up to a $10$\% relative gain, while maintaining Lasso-like interpretability. We substantiate these empirical results with ablation studies and theoretical proofs confirming the architecture's enhanced expressivity and structural breaking of undesired rotational invariance.
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publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle LassoFlexNet: Flexible Neural Architecture for Tabular Data
Lui, Kry Yik Chau
Chi, Cheng
Basu, Kishore
Cao, Yanshuai
Machine Learning
Despite their dominance in vision and language, deep neural networks often underperform relative to tree-based models on tabular data. To bridge this gap, we incorporate five key inductive biases into deep learning: robustness to irrelevant features, axis alignment, localized irregularities, feature heterogeneity, and training stability. We propose \emph{LassoFlexNet}, an architecture that evaluates the linear and nonlinear marginal contribution of each input via Per-Feature Embeddings, and sparsely selects relevant variables using a Tied Group Lasso mechanism. Because these components introduce optimization challenges that destabilize standard proximal methods, we develop a \emph{Sequential Hierarchical Proximal Adaptive Gradient optimizer with exponential moving averages (EMA)} to ensure stable convergence. Across $52$ datasets from three benchmarks, LassoFlexNet matches or outperforms leading tree-based models, achieving up to a $10$\% relative gain, while maintaining Lasso-like interpretability. We substantiate these empirical results with ablation studies and theoretical proofs confirming the architecture's enhanced expressivity and structural breaking of undesired rotational invariance.
title LassoFlexNet: Flexible Neural Architecture for Tabular Data
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20631