@inproceedings{gao-etal-2026-towards,
title = "Towards Interpretable Tabular Reasoning: Enhancing {LLM} Reasoning on Tabular Data with Pre-Constructed Logic Graph",
author = "Gao, Lirong and
Yu, Zewei and
Yin, Zhongrui and
Zhang, Qi and
Zhu, Yuke and
Zheng, Bo and
Wang, Haobo and
Zhao, Junbo and
Chen, Gang and
Guo, Sheng",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1396/",
pages = "30260--30280",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Tabular data is widely used in fields such as finance and healthcare. Traditional tree-based models are prevalent for tabular prediction tasks due to their ability to handle heterogeneous features. However, their heavy reliance on feature engineering limits both their generalizability and their human-readable interpretability. On the other hand, Large Language Models (LLMs) naturally provide intermediate reasoning steps, thus offering greater transparency in decision-making. Nevertheless, LLMs often fail to match the predictive performance of tree-based models on tabular data. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Logic-Graph-Enhanced LLM Reasoning (LogGER) framework that integrates the strengths of tree-based models and LLMs. Specifically, we reformulate the traditional decision tree as a human-readable logic graph, which explicitly models the causal relationships between features and targets. This logic graph is automatically constructed using LLMs based on data priors and serves as the foundation for LogGER. To fully leverage the logic graph, we further introduce a logic-graph-guided process supervision approach, which evaluates and enhances the quality of LLM{'}s intermediate reasoning steps using logic-graph-aided process reward. Extensive experiments demonstrate that LogGER consistently outperforms both tree-based models and state-of-the-art LLM methods on a variety of tabular prediction tasks, achieving superior accuracy and interpretability."
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<abstract>Tabular data is widely used in fields such as finance and healthcare. Traditional tree-based models are prevalent for tabular prediction tasks due to their ability to handle heterogeneous features. However, their heavy reliance on feature engineering limits both their generalizability and their human-readable interpretability. On the other hand, Large Language Models (LLMs) naturally provide intermediate reasoning steps, thus offering greater transparency in decision-making. Nevertheless, LLMs often fail to match the predictive performance of tree-based models on tabular data. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Logic-Graph-Enhanced LLM Reasoning (LogGER) framework that integrates the strengths of tree-based models and LLMs. Specifically, we reformulate the traditional decision tree as a human-readable logic graph, which explicitly models the causal relationships between features and targets. This logic graph is automatically constructed using LLMs based on data priors and serves as the foundation for LogGER. To fully leverage the logic graph, we further introduce a logic-graph-guided process supervision approach, which evaluates and enhances the quality of LLM’s intermediate reasoning steps using logic-graph-aided process reward. Extensive experiments demonstrate that LogGER consistently outperforms both tree-based models and state-of-the-art LLM methods on a variety of tabular prediction tasks, achieving superior accuracy and interpretability.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Towards Interpretable Tabular Reasoning: Enhancing LLM Reasoning on Tabular Data with Pre-Constructed Logic Graph
%A Gao, Lirong
%A Yu, Zewei
%A Yin, Zhongrui
%A Zhang, Qi
%A Zhu, Yuke
%A Zheng, Bo
%A Wang, Haobo
%A Zhao, Junbo
%A Chen, Gang
%A Guo, Sheng
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F gao-etal-2026-towards
%X Tabular data is widely used in fields such as finance and healthcare. Traditional tree-based models are prevalent for tabular prediction tasks due to their ability to handle heterogeneous features. However, their heavy reliance on feature engineering limits both their generalizability and their human-readable interpretability. On the other hand, Large Language Models (LLMs) naturally provide intermediate reasoning steps, thus offering greater transparency in decision-making. Nevertheless, LLMs often fail to match the predictive performance of tree-based models on tabular data. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Logic-Graph-Enhanced LLM Reasoning (LogGER) framework that integrates the strengths of tree-based models and LLMs. Specifically, we reformulate the traditional decision tree as a human-readable logic graph, which explicitly models the causal relationships between features and targets. This logic graph is automatically constructed using LLMs based on data priors and serves as the foundation for LogGER. To fully leverage the logic graph, we further introduce a logic-graph-guided process supervision approach, which evaluates and enhances the quality of LLM’s intermediate reasoning steps using logic-graph-aided process reward. Extensive experiments demonstrate that LogGER consistently outperforms both tree-based models and state-of-the-art LLM methods on a variety of tabular prediction tasks, achieving superior accuracy and interpretability.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1396/
%P 30260-30280
Markdown (Informal)
[Towards Interpretable Tabular Reasoning: Enhancing LLM Reasoning on Tabular Data with Pre-Constructed Logic Graph](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1396/) (Gao et al., ACL 2026)
ACL
- Lirong Gao, Zewei Yu, Zhongrui Yin, Qi Zhang, Yuke Zhu, Bo Zheng, Haobo Wang, Junbo Zhao, Gang Chen, and Sheng Guo. 2026. Towards Interpretable Tabular Reasoning: Enhancing LLM Reasoning on Tabular Data with Pre-Constructed Logic Graph. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 30260–30280, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.