pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Advancing Chart Question Answering with Robust Chart Component Recognition
Authors: Hanwen Zheng, Sijia Wang, Chris Thomas, Lifu Huang
Date: 2024-07-19 00:00:00
Tasks: Chart Question Answering, Question Answering

Chart comprehension presents significant challenges for machine learning models due to the diverse and intricate shapes of charts. Existing multimodal methods often overlook these visual features or fail to integrate them effectively for chart question answering (ChartQA). To address this, we introduce Chartformer, a unified framework that enhances chart component recognition by accurately identifying and classifying components such as bars, lines, pies, titles, legends, and axes. Additionally, we propose a novel Question-guided Deformable Co-Attention (QDCAt) mechanism, which fuses chart features encoded by Chartformer with the given question, leveraging the question's guidance to ground the correct answer. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed approaches significantly outperform baseline models in chart component recognition and ChartQA tasks, achieving improvements of 3.2% in mAP and 15.4% in accuracy, respectively. These results underscore the robustness of our solution for detailed visual data interpretation across various applications.
What Matters in Explanations: Towards Explainable Fake Review Detection Focusing on Transformers
Authors: Md Shajalal, Md Atabuzzaman, Alexander Boden, Gunnar Stevens, Delong Du
Date: 2024-07-24 00:00:00

Customers' reviews and feedback play crucial role on electronic commerce~(E-commerce) platforms like Amazon, Zalando, and eBay in influencing other customers' purchasing decisions. However, there is a prevailing concern that sellers often post fake or spam reviews to deceive potential customers and manipulate their opinions about a product. Over the past decade, there has been considerable interest in using machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models to identify such fraudulent reviews. Unfortunately, the decisions made by complex ML and DL models - which often function as \emph{black-boxes} - can be surprising and difficult for general users to comprehend. In this paper, we propose an explainable framework for detecting fake reviews with high precision in identifying fraudulent content with explanations and investigate what information matters most for explaining particular decisions by conducting empirical user evaluation. Initially, we develop fake review detection models using DL and transformer models including XLNet and DistilBERT. We then introduce layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP) technique for generating explanations that can map the contributions of words toward the predicted class. The experimental results on two benchmark fake review detection datasets demonstrate that our predictive models achieve state-of-the-art performance and outperform several existing methods. Furthermore, the empirical user evaluation of the generated explanations concludes which important information needs to be considered in generating explanations in the context of fake review identification.
Modular RAG: Transforming RAG Systems into LEGO-like Reconfigurable Frameworks
Authors: Yunfan Gao, Yun Xiong, Meng Wang, Haofen Wang
Date: 2024-07-26 00:00:00
Tasks: RAG, Retrieval-augmented Generation, Scheduling

Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG) has markedly enhanced the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in tackling knowledge-intensive tasks. The increasing demands of application scenarios have driven the evolution of RAG, leading to the integration of advanced retrievers, LLMs and other complementary technologies, which in turn has amplified the intricacy of RAG systems. However, the rapid advancements are outpacing the foundational RAG paradigm, with many methods struggling to be unified under the process of "retrieve-then-generate". In this context, this paper examines the limitations of the existing RAG paradigm and introduces the modular RAG framework. By decomposing complex RAG systems into independent modules and specialized operators, it facilitates a highly reconfigurable framework. Modular RAG transcends the traditional linear architecture, embracing a more advanced design that integrates routing, scheduling, and fusion mechanisms. Drawing on extensive research, this paper further identifies prevalent RAG patterns-linear, conditional, branching, and looping-and offers a comprehensive analysis of their respective implementation nuances. Modular RAG presents innovative opportunities for the conceptualization and deployment of RAG systems. Finally, the paper explores the potential emergence of new operators and paradigms, establishing a solid theoretical foundation and a practical roadmap for the continued evolution and practical deployment of RAG technologies.
Adaptive Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Conversational Systems
Authors: Xi Wang, Procheta Sen, Ruizhe Li, Emine Yilmaz
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Despite the success of integrating large language models into the development of conversational systems, many studies have shown the effectiveness of retrieving and augmenting external knowledge for informative responses. Hence, many existing studies commonly assume the always need for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) in a conversational system without explicit control. This raises a research question about such a necessity. In this study, we propose to investigate the need for each turn of system response to be augmented with external knowledge. In particular, by leveraging human judgements on the binary choice of adaptive augmentation, we develop RAGate, a gating model, which models conversation context and relevant inputs to predict if a conversational system requires RAG for improved responses. We conduct extensive experiments on devising and applying RAGate to conversational models and well-rounded analyses of different conversational scenarios. Our experimental results and analysis indicate the effective application of RAGate in RAG-based conversational systems in identifying system responses for appropriate RAG with high-quality responses and a high generation confidence. This study also identifies the correlation between the generation's confidence level and the relevance of the augmented knowledge.
Whitney extensions on symmetric spaces
Authors: Birgit Speh, Peter Vang Uttenthal
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00

In 1934, H. Whitney introduced the problem of extending a function on a set of points in $\mathbb{R}^n$ to an analytic function on the ambient space. In this article we prove Whitney type extension theorems for data on some homogeneous spaces. We use harmonic analysis on the homogeneous spaces and representation theory of compact as well as noncompact reductive groups.
Towards Automated Data Sciences with Natural Language and SageCopilot: Practices and Lessons Learned
Authors: Yuan Liao, Jiang Bian, Yuhui Yun, Shuo Wang, Yubo Zhang, Jiaming Chu, Tao Wang, Kewei Li, Yuchen Li, Xuhong LI, Shilei Ji, Haoyi Xiong
Date: 2024-07-21 00:00:00
Tasks: In-Context Learning

While the field of NL2SQL has made significant advancements in translating natural language instructions into executable SQL scripts for data querying and processing, achieving full automation within the broader data science pipeline - encompassing data querying, analysis, visualization, and reporting - remains a complex challenge. This study introduces SageCopilot, an advanced, industry-grade system system that automates the data science pipeline by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs), Autonomous Agents (AutoAgents), and Language User Interfaces (LUIs). Specifically, SageCopilot incorporates a two-phase design: an online component refining users' inputs into executable scripts through In-Context Learning (ICL) and running the scripts for results reporting & visualization, and an offline preparing demonstrations requested by ICL in the online phase. A list of trending strategies such as Chain-of-Thought and prompt-tuning have been used to augment SageCopilot for enhanced performance. Through rigorous testing and comparative analysis against prompt-based solutions, SageCopilot has been empirically validated to achieve superior end-to-end performance in generating or executing scripts and offering results with visualization, backed by real-world datasets. Our in-depth ablation studies highlight the individual contributions of various components and strategies used by SageCopilot to the end-to-end correctness for data sciences.
Beyond Metrics: A Critical Analysis of the Variability in Large Language Model Evaluation Frameworks
Authors: Marco AF Pimentel, Clément Christophe, Tathagata Raha, Prateek Munjal, Praveen K Kanithi, Shadab Khan
Date: 2024-07-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking, Language Model Evaluation, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

As large language models (LLMs) continue to evolve, the need for robust and standardized evaluation benchmarks becomes paramount. Evaluating the performance of these models is a complex challenge that requires careful consideration of various linguistic tasks, model architectures, and benchmarking methodologies. In recent years, various frameworks have emerged as noteworthy contributions to the field, offering comprehensive evaluation tests and benchmarks for assessing the capabilities of LLMs across diverse domains. This paper provides an exploration and critical analysis of some of these evaluation methodologies, shedding light on their strengths, limitations, and impact on advancing the state-of-the-art in natural language processing.
Extending choice assessments to choice functions: An algorithm for computing the natural extension
Authors: Arne Decadt, Alexander Erreygers, Jasper De Bock
Date: 2024-07-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

We study how to infer new choices from prior choices using the framework of choice functions, a unifying mathematical framework for decision-making based on sets of preference orders. In particular, we define the natural (most conservative) extension of a given choice assessment to a coherent choice function -- whenever possible -- and use this natural extension to make new choices. We provide a practical algorithm for computing this natural extension and various ways to improve scalability. Finally, we test these algorithms for different types of choice assessments.
Deduction Game Framework and Information Set Entropy Search
Authors: Fandi Meng, Simon Lucas
Date: 2024-07-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

We present a game framework tailored for deduction games, enabling structured analysis from the perspective of Shannon entropy variations. Additionally, we introduce a new forward search algorithm, Information Set Entropy Search (ISES), which effectively solves many single-player deduction games. The ISES algorithm, augmented with sampling techniques, allows agents to make decisions within controlled computational resources and time constraints. Experimental results on eight games within our framework demonstrate the significant superiority of our method over the Single Observer Information Set Monte Carlo Tree Search(SO-ISMCTS) algorithm under limited decision time constraints. The entropy variation of game states in our framework enables explainable decision-making, which can also be used to analyze the appeal of deduction games and provide insights for game designers.
LoRaWAN Based Dynamic Noise Mapping with Machine Learning for Urban Noise Enforcement
Authors: H. Emre Erdem, Henry Leung
Date: 2024-07-30 00:00:00

Static noise maps depicting long-term noise levels over wide areas are valuable urban planning assets for municipalities in decreasing noise exposure of residents. However, non-traffic noise sources with transient behavior, which people complain frequently, are usually ignored by static maps. We propose here a dynamic noise mapping approach using the data collected via low-power wide-area network (LPWAN, specifically LoRaWAN) based internet of things (IoT) infrastructure, which is one of the most common communication backbones for smart cities. Noise mapping based on LPWAN is challenging due to the low data rates of these protocols. The proposed dynamic noise mapping approach diminishes the negative implications of data rate limitations using machine learning (ML) for event and location prediction of non-traffic sources based on the scarce data. The strength of these models lies in their consideration of the spatial variance in acoustic behavior caused by the buildings in urban settings. The effectiveness of the proposed method and the accuracy of the resulting dynamic maps are evaluated in field tests. The results show that the proposed system can decrease the map error caused by non-traffic sources up to 51% and can stay effective under significant packet losses.
Automated Quantification of Hyperreflective Foci in SD-OCT With Diabetic Retinopathy
Authors: Idowu Paul Okuwobi, Zexuan Ji, Wen Fan, Songtao Yuan, Loza Bekalo, Qiang Chen
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00

The presence of hyperreflective foci (HFs) is related to retinal disease progression, and the quantity has proven to be a prognostic factor of visual and anatomical outcome in various retinal diseases. However, lack of efficient quantitative tools for evaluating the HFs has deprived ophthalmologist of assessing the volume of HFs. For this reason, we propose an automated quantification algorithm to segment and quantify HFs in spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). The proposed algorithm consists of two parallel processes namely: region of interest (ROI) generation and HFs estimation. To generate the ROI, we use morphological reconstruction to obtain the reconstructed image and histogram constructed for data distributions and clustering. In parallel, we estimate the HFs by extracting the extremal regions from the connected regions obtained from a component tree. Finally, both the ROI and the HFs estimation process are merged to obtain the segmented HFs. The proposed algorithm was tested on 40 3D SD-OCT volumes from 40 patients diagnosed with non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), and diabetic macular edema (DME). The average dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and correlation coefficient (r) are 69.70%, 0.99 for NPDR, 70.31%, 0.99 for PDR, and 71.30%, 0.99 for DME, respectively. The proposed algorithm can provide ophthalmologist with good HFs quantitative information, such as volume, size, and location of the HFs.
Fi$^2$VTS: Time Series Forecasting Via Capturing Intra- and Inter-Variable Variations in the Frequency Domain
Authors: Rujia Shen, Yang Yang, Yaoxion Lin, Liangliang Liu, Boran Wang, Yi Guan, Jingchi Jiang
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Time Series, Time Series Forecasting

Time series forecasting (TSF) plays a crucial role in various applications, including medical monitoring and crop growth. Despite the advancements in deep learning methods for TSF, their capacity to predict long-term series remains constrained. This limitation arises from the failure to account for both intra- and inter-variable variations meanwhile. To mitigate this challenge, we introduce the Fi$^2$VBlock, which leverages a \textbf{F}requency domain perspective to capture \textbf{i}ntra- and \textbf{i}nter-variable \textbf{V}ariations. After transforming into the frequency domain via the Frequency Transform Module, the Frequency Cross Attention between the real and imaginary parts is designed to obtain enhanced frequency representations and capture intra-variable variations. Furthermore, Inception blocks are employed to integrate information, thus capturing correlations across different variables. Our backbone network, Fi$^2$VTS, employs a residual architecture by concatenating multiple Fi$^2$VBlocks, thereby preventing degradation issues. Theoretically, we demonstrate that Fi$^2$VTS achieves a substantial reduction in both time and memory complexity, decreasing from $\mathcal{O}(L^2)$ to $\mathcal{O}(L)$ per Fi$^2$VBlock computation. Empirical evaluations reveal that Fi$^2$VTS outperforms other baselines on two benchmark datasets. The implementation code is accessible at \url{https://github.com/HITshenrj/Fi2VTS}.
Multi-Level Querying using A Knowledge Pyramid
Authors: Rubing Chen, Xulu Zhang, Jiaxin Wu, Wenqi Fan, Xiao-Yong Wei, Qing Li
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Knowledge Graphs, RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

This paper addresses the need for improved precision in existing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) methods that primarily focus on enhancing recall. We propose a multi-layer knowledge pyramid approach within the RAG framework to achieve a better balance between precision and recall. The knowledge pyramid consists of three layers: Ontologies, Knowledge Graphs (KGs), and chunk-based raw text. We employ cross-layer augmentation techniques for comprehensive knowledge coverage and dynamic updates of the Ontology schema and instances. To ensure compactness, we utilize cross-layer filtering methods for knowledge condensation in KGs. Our approach, named PolyRAG, follows a waterfall model for retrieval, starting from the top of the pyramid and progressing down until a confident answer is obtained. We introduce two benchmarks for domain-specific knowledge retrieval, one in the academic domain and the other in the financial domain. The effectiveness of the methods has been validated through comprehensive experiments by outperforming 19 SOTA methods. An encouraging observation is that the proposed method has augmented the GPT-4, providing 395\% F1 gain by improving its performance from 0.1636 to 0.8109.
MetaOpenFOAM: an LLM-based multi-agent framework for CFD
Authors: Yuxuan Chen, Xu Zhu, Hua Zhou, Zhuyin Ren
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: RAG, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Remarkable progress has been made in automated problem solving through societies of agents based on large language models (LLMs). Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), as a complex problem, presents unique challenges in automated simulations that require sophisticated solutions. MetaOpenFOAM, as a novel multi-agent collaborations framework, aims to complete CFD simulation tasks with only natural language as input. These simulation tasks include mesh pre-processing, simulation and so on. MetaOpenFOAM harnesses the power of MetaGPT's assembly line paradigm, which assigns diverse roles to various agents, efficiently breaking down complex CFD tasks into manageable subtasks. Langchain further complements MetaOpenFOAM by integrating Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, which enhances the framework's ability by integrating a searchable database of OpenFOAM tutorials for LLMs. Tests on a benchmark for natural language-based CFD solver, consisting of eight CFD simulation tasks, have shown that MetaOpenFOAM achieved a high pass rate per test (85%), with each test case costing only $0.22 on average. The eight CFD simulation tasks encompass a range of multidimensional flow problems, covering compressible and incompressible flows with different physical processes. This demonstrates the capability to automate CFD simulations using only natural language input, iteratively correcting errors to achieve the desired simulations. An ablation study was conducted to verify the necessity of each component in the multi-agent system and the RAG technology. A sensitivity study on the randomness of LLM showed that LLM with low randomness can obtain more stable and accurate results. Additionally, MetaOpenFOAM owns the ability to identify and modify key parameters in user requirements, and excels in correcting bugs when failure match occur,which demonstrates the generalization of MetaOpenFOAM.
Dual-Constrained Dynamical Neural ODEs for Ambiguity-aware Continuous Emotion Prediction
Authors: Jingyao Wu, Ting Dang, Vidhyasaharan Sethu, Eliathamby Ambikairajah
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Time Series

There has been a significant focus on modelling emotion ambiguity in recent years, with advancements made in representing emotions as distributions to capture ambiguity. However, there has been comparatively less effort devoted to the consideration of temporal dependencies in emotion distributions which encodes ambiguity in perceived emotions that evolve smoothly over time. Recognizing the benefits of using constrained dynamical neural ordinary differential equations (CD-NODE) to model time series as dynamic processes, we propose an ambiguity-aware dual-constrained Neural ODE approach to model the dynamics of emotion distributions on arousal and valence. In our approach, we utilize ODEs parameterised by neural networks to estimate the distribution parameters, and we integrate additional constraints to restrict the range of the system outputs to ensure the validity of predicted distributions. We evaluated our proposed system on the publicly available RECOLA dataset and observed very promising performance across a range of evaluation metrics.
Tree-of-Traversals: A Zero-Shot Reasoning Algorithm for Augmenting Black-box Language Models with Knowledge Graphs
Authors: Elan Markowitz, Anil Ramakrishna, Jwala Dhamala, Ninareh Mehrabi, Charith Peris, Rahul Gupta, Kai-Wei Chang, Aram Galstyan
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Knowledge Graphs, Question Answering

Knowledge graphs (KGs) complement Large Language Models (LLMs) by providing reliable, structured, domain-specific, and up-to-date external knowledge. However, KGs and LLMs are often developed separately and must be integrated after training. We introduce Tree-of-Traversals, a novel zero-shot reasoning algorithm that enables augmentation of black-box LLMs with one or more KGs. The algorithm equips a LLM with actions for interfacing a KG and enables the LLM to perform tree search over possible thoughts and actions to find high confidence reasoning paths. We evaluate on two popular benchmark datasets. Our results show that Tree-of-Traversals significantly improves performance on question answering and KG question answering tasks. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/amazon-science/tree-of-traversals}
An Extended Kalman Filter Integrated Latent Feature Model on Dynamic Weighted Directed Graphs
Authors: Hongxun Zhou, Xiangyu Chen, Ye Yuan
Date: 2024-07-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency

A dynamic weighted directed graph (DWDG) is commonly encountered in various application scenarios. It involves extensive dynamic interactions among numerous nodes. Most existing approaches explore the intricate temporal patterns hidden in a DWDG from the purely data-driven perspective, which suffers from accuracy loss when a DWDG exhibits strong fluctuations over time. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel Extended-Kalman-Filter-Incorporated Latent Feature (EKLF) model to represent a DWDG from the model-driven perspective. Its main idea is divided into the following two-fold ideas: a) adopting a control model, i.e., the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), to track the complex temporal patterns precisely with its nonlinear state-transition and observation functions; and b) introducing an alternating least squares (ALS) algorithm to train the latent features (LFs) alternatively for precisely representing a DWDG. Empirical studies on DWDG datasets demonstrate that the proposed EKLF model outperforms state-of-the-art models in prediction accuracy and computational efficiency for missing edge weights of a DWDG. It unveils the potential for precisely representing a DWDG by incorporating a control model.