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arXiv · 2407.00956

A Closer Look at Deep Learning Methods on Tabular Datasets

Han-Jia Ye·Si-Yang Liu·Hao-Run Cai·Qi-Le Zhou·De-Chuan Zhan
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Abstract

Tabular data is prevalent across diverse domains in machine learning. With the rapid progress of deep tabular prediction methods, especially pretrained (foundation) models, there is a growing need to evaluate these methods systematically and to understand their behavior. We present an extensive study on TALENT, a collection of 300+ datasets spanning broad ranges of size, feature composition (numerical/categorical mixes), domains, and output types (binary, multi--class, regression). Our evaluation shows that ensembling benefits both tree-based and neural approaches. Traditional gradient-boosted trees remain very strong baselines, yet recent pretrained tabular models now match or surpass them on many tasks, narrowing--but not eliminating--the historical advantage of tree ensembles. Despite architectural diversity, top performance concentrates within a small subset of models, providing practical guidance for method selection. To explain these outcomes, we quantify dataset heterogeneity by learning from meta-features and early training dynamics to predict later validation behavior. This dynamics-aware analysis indicates that heterogeneity--such as the interplay of categorical and numerical attributes--largely determines which family of methods is favored. Finally, we introduce a two-level design beyond the 300 common-size datasets: a compact TALENT-tiny core (45 datasets) for rapid, reproducible evaluation, and a TALENT-extension suite targeting high-dimensional, many-class, and very large-scale settings for stress testing. In summary, these results offer actionable insights into the strengths, limitations, and future directions for improving deep tabular learning.

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Han-Jia Ye, Si-Yang Liu, Hao-Run Cai, Qi-Le Zhou, De-Chuan Zhan. 2025-11-07. A Closer Look at Deep Learning Methods on Tabular Datasets. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00956

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