REVIEW 4 major objections 4 minor 32 references
Unveiling the Role of Data Uncertainty in Tabular Deep Learning
T0 review · 4 major / 4 minor · reviewed 2026-08-15 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read A large share of tabular deep learning's recent wins comes from implicitly handling high data uncertainty, and making that explicit yields a better embedding.
desk verdict A useful uncertainty lens for tabular DL with solid mechanism sections, but the headline 'disproportionate benefit' claim needs quantitative backup beyond absolute ΔMSE curves. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The central object is the per-sample data uncertainty estimate, obtained by fitting the model $y_i = f(x_i) + e^{g(x_i)} \cdot \mathcal{N}(0,1)$ to predict both the noiseless target and the noise scale, using CatBoost with a Gaussian likelihood loss. Around this, the paper builds uncertainty plots that sort test points by estimated uncertainty and plot per-sample MSE differences between models. For the new embedding method, the load-bearing device is the triplet loss: for each anchor, the closer-in-target object is the positive and the farther one the negative, so the embedder is trained to make embeddings reflect target similarity; this pretrained embedder's last linear layer is discarded and the rest initializes the LRLR embedding of an MLP. For TabM, the key identity is the gradient decomposition $\frac{\partial(\phi(x_i)-y_i)^2}{\partial\theta} = 2(\phi(x_i)-f(x_i))\frac{\partial\phi(x_i)}{\partial\theta} - 2 e^{g(x_i)}\mathcal{N}(0,1)\frac{\partial\phi(x_i)}{\partial\theta}$, which lets the paper show in synthetic experiments that sharing parameters and averaging gradients across branches suppresses the noisy term more than the clean term.
What would settle it
On a real regression dataset with clean targets, inject known heteroscedastic noise; if the performance gains of MLP-PLR, ModernNCA, and TabM do not concentrate on samples with the largest injected noise, the paper's main claim fails.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
The central claim is that a significant portion of the success of numerical feature embeddings, retrieval-augmented models, and advanced ensembling in tabular deep learning can be attributed to their implicit yet effective mechanisms for handling datapoints with high data uncertainty. The paper demonstrates, on real and synthetic regression datasets, that the per-sample performance gap between a plain MLP and each of these techniques grows as estimated uncertainty grows, often faster than the MLP's own error. For embeddings, the mechanism is improved local target consistency: the learned feature space makes neighbors more likely to share similar targets, which matters most where labels are noisy. For retrieval (ModernNCA), averaging over many neighbors resists memorizing label noise, though it can underfit in low-uncertainty regions. For ensembling (TabM), averaging gradients across shared branches reduces the noisy component of the gradient relative to the clean component, making training robust at high uncertainty. As a direct payoff, the paper introduces LRLRtriplet embeddings, which are pretrained with a triplet loss to maximize local target consistency and then fine-tuned; this scheme achieves an average rank of 1.17 across regression datasets compared to 1.67 for standard LRLR embeddings and 2.75 for a plain MLP.
Load-bearing premise
The CatBoost-based estimates of per-sample data uncertainty reflect the true aleatoric uncertainty on the real datasets; if that mapping is wrong, the apparent concentration of performance gains on 'high-uncertainty' points could be an artifact of the estimator rather than a property of the data.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- Numerical feature embeddings, retrieval heads, and parameter-efficient ensembles share a common explanatory mechanism; future tabular designs can be evaluated by whether they improve handling of high-uncertainty samples.
- The LRLRtriplet scheme offers a concrete accuracy gain on regression benchmarks, with an average rank of 1.17 versus 1.67 for standard LRLR embeddings.
- Uncertainty plots become a diagnostic tool: comparing per-sample errors sorted by estimated uncertainty reveals why one method beats another on a given dataset.
- TabM's gradient-averaging analysis predicts that ensembling variants that reduce the noisy gradient component will be especially robust to label noise.
Reading between the lines
- Beyond the paper: if the shared mechanism is real, then the unresolved DL-versus-GBDT gap on tabular data is largely a high-uncertainty phenomenon; combining uncertainty-aware losses with GBDT-style smoothing could close it further.
- Beyond the paper: the triplet-pretraining recipe could be adapted to classification by treating targets as soft labels, or to tabular foundation models to make their few-shot gains interpretable through uncertainty handling.
- Beyond the paper: the analysis only covers regression; a direct test would inject heteroscedastic noise into clean classification datasets and check whether the same techniques' gains concentrate on noisy points.
Signed reviews
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper proposes data (aleatoric) uncertainty as a unifying lens for explaining why several recent tabular deep learning techniques outperform a plain MLP: numerical feature embeddings (PLR/LRLR), retrieval-augmented models (ModernNCA), and parameter-efficient ensembling (TabM). The authors estimate the conditional target variance using a CatBoost model with an uncertainty-aware loss, sort test examples by estimated uncertainty, and present smoothed curves of absolute MSE differences (MSE_MLP minus MSE_model) to argue that the gains are concentrated on high-uncertainty points. They support this with synthetic datasets with known ground-truth noise, including an MLP-generated heteroscedastic regression, a saw-like 2D regression, and an 'Uncertain CIFAR-10' classification experiment. They also propose a new embedding scheme, LRLR_triplet, trained with a triplet loss to maximize local target consistency, and report improved average rank over standard LRLR embeddings on regression benchmarks.
Significance. If the uncertainty-attribution claim is established, the paper would provide a genuinely unifying explanation for several seemingly unrelated design choices in tabular deep learning and a principled basis for future method development. The paper is strengthened by multi-dataset evidence, synthetic ground-truth validation, robustness checks across alternative uncertainty estimators (Appendix H), and the release of code. The proposed LRLR_triplet embedding is a useful practical artifact. However, the central quantitative support currently rests on visual inspection of absolute-error curves, and the real-data conclusions depend on an uncertainty estimator whose accuracy on real data is not directly validated; both issues are addressable in revision.
major comments (4)
- [Sections 5–7 (Figures 3, 6, 8, 10)] The claim that the methods are 'disproportionately more beneficial' on high-uncertainty points is supported only by absolute ΔMSE = MSE_MLP − MSE_model versus estimated uncertainty. Under the paper's own generative model (Eq. 1), the expected MSE of any model is e^{2g(x)} plus an excess-error term, and the irreducible variance cancels in ΔMSE. Thus an increasing absolute ΔMSE is expected for any better model on harder (high-uncertainty) points, even if the model provides a constant relative improvement everywhere; in that case ΔMSE ∝ MSE_MLP, which grows with uncertainty because MSE_MLP itself grows. The paper explicitly claims the growth is faster than MSE_MLP (Section 5), but no slopes, normalized curves, or confidence intervals are reported. The same absolute metric is used in Figure 3 even though true uncertainty is known, so the synthetic validation does not resolve this artifact. Please provide a relative-improvement analysis, e.g., ΔMSE/MSE_MLP as a function of uncertainty or quantitative slope comparisons with confidence intervals, for Figures 3, 6, 8, and 10; without this, the attribution to an uncertainty-specific mechanism is not established.
- [Section 3.1, Figure 2b, Appendix H] The real-data conclusions require that the CatBoost-based uncertainty estimates order test examples by true aleatoric variance. The only validation against ground truth is on synthetic data with MLP-generated f and g, and Figure 2b shows only a scatterplot without a quantitative accuracy measure. Appendix H demonstrates robustness to the choice of estimator (CatBoost vs MLP/MLP-PLR), but it does not validate any estimator against true uncertainty on the real datasets where the main conclusions are drawn. A concrete test would be to inject controlled label noise into real features (or use datasets with repeated labels) and verify that the estimated-uncertainty ranking correlates with the known noise levels; at minimum, report a rank correlation or calibration statistic for the estimators on real data. Without this, the observed concentration of gains could reflect the estimator's error model rather than true data uncertainty.
- [Section 4.2 and Appendix D] The saw-like synthetic dataset is described inconsistently between the main text and the appendix. Section 4.2 samples uniformly from a rectangle with vertices (0,0) and (1,10) and sets the noise standard deviation to e^{g(x)} = x_2^6/62500, depending on the vertical coordinate. Appendix D instead describes triangles with vertices (2i,0), (2i+1,1), (2i+2,0) for i=0..4 (which extend to x_1=10) and a noise standard deviation of x_1^6/4 for x_1 from 0 to 10. The coordinate ranges and the noise formula disagree, so the synthetic experiments in Figures 5, 11, and 12 cannot be reproduced from the paper as written. Please correct the text to match the released code and align the two descriptions.
- [Section 7, Figure 10, Appendix E] The comparison between TabM and Deep Ensemble is not controlled for the number of ensemble members. Section 4.2 specifies that the Deep Ensemble averages five independently trained MLPs, while Appendix E fixes 16 branches for TabM; if the same settings are used for Figure 10, the larger effective ensemble size for TabM could be partly responsible for its larger gains on high-uncertainty points. Please compare TabM against a Deep Ensemble with a matched number of members (or otherwise match capacity and computation) before attributing the difference to TabM's parameter-sharing gradient-averaging mechanism.
minor comments (4)
- [Appendix B] Please state the Gaussian smoothing bandwidth used for the uncertainty plots and provide a sensitivity check; the smoothing parameter is a free choice that can affect the visual conclusions.
- [Figure 2b] Please report a rank correlation coefficient (e.g., Spearman) and, if possible, a calibration measure between the CatBoost uncertainty estimates and the ground-truth values; the scatterplot alone does not quantify the claimed strong agreement.
- [Section 5.2, Table 2, Appendix G] The statement that LRLR_triplet 'substantially outperforms' standard LRLR should be supported by the fraction of datasets with statistically significant improvements and by effect sizes, because many dataset-wise differences in Appendix G are within one standard deviation of each other.
- [Figure 1 caption] The caption uses 'significantly worse performance' in an informal sense; please either use a statistical test and report the result, or rephrase to avoid implying formal significance testing.
Circularity Check
No significant circularity: the uncertainty analysis, mechanism tests, and proposed embedding are each evaluated on quantities distinct from their construction inputs.
full rationale
The paper's derivation chain is not circular. The data-uncertainty estimates in Section 3.1 are fitted from Eq. (1) to the target variable, but the claims about method effectiveness are tested on the difference MSE_MLP - MSE_model, which removes the irreducible variance term e^{2g(x)}; therefore the observed growth of Delta-MSE with estimated uncertainty is an empirical excess-error comparison rather than a definitional identity. The estimator is not the sole input: Figure 2b validates CatBoost estimates against true g(x) on a synthetic dataset with MLP-generated f and g, and Appendix H repeats the main plots with MLP- and MLP-PLR-based estimators, so the x-axis ordering is not an artifact of the very model family whose behavior is being explained. For TabM, the gradient clean/noisy decomposition is computed on synthetic data where f and g are known, so the proposed mechanism is measured rather than assumed. For the novel LRLRtriplet embedding, the training objective (triplet loss maximizing local target consistency) is different from the evaluation metric (downstream regression MSE), so the reported improvement in Table 2 is not guaranteed by construction; it is an independent benchmark result. The paper's self-citations to TabReD datasets and to LRLR/TabM methods supply baselines and objects of study, but the load-bearing support for the uncertainty explanation comes from the synthetic ground-truth experiments and the estimator-robustness checks, not from those citations. Concerns about absolute Delta-MSE curves or about the reliability of CatBoost-based uncertainty on real datasets are empirical validity risks, not circularity.
Assumptions & free parameters
free parameters (2)
- CatBoost uncertainty estimator configuration =
not reported
- Uncertainty plot smoothing bandwidth =
not reported
assumptions (3)
- domain assumption Tabular regression targets follow y = f(x) + exp(g(x)) * N(0,1), with label noise independent of features.
- domain assumption CatBoost uncertainty estimates approximate true aleatoric uncertainty on real datasets.
- ad hoc to paper Observed performance differences on high-uncertainty points are caused by the methods' mechanisms rather than by correlated dataset structure or estimator artifacts.
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of Unveiling the Role of Data Uncertainty in Tabular Deep Learning." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/G3VVRKPS
@misc{pith2026250904430,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: Unveiling the Role of Data Uncertainty in Tabular Deep Learning},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/G3VVRKPS}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2509.04430}
}
read the original abstract
Recent advancements in tabular deep learning have demonstrated exceptional practical performance, yet the field often lacks a clear understanding of why these techniques actually succeed. To address this gap, our paper highlights the importance of the concept of data uncertainty for explaining the effectiveness of the recent tabular DL methods. In particular, we reveal that the success of many beneficial design choices in tabular DL, such as numerical feature embeddings, retrieval-augmented models and advanced ensembling strategies, can be largely attributed to their implicit mechanisms for managing high data uncertainty. By dissecting these mechanisms, we provide a unifying understanding of the recent performance improvements. Furthermore, the insights derived from this data-uncertainty perspective directly allowed us to develop more effective numerical feature embeddings as an immediate practical outcome of our analysis. Overall, our work paves the way to foundational understanding of the benefits introduced by modern tabular methods that results in the concrete advancements of existing techniques and outlines future research directions for tabular DL.
Figures
Figures from the paper (16 more)
Reference graph
Works this paper leans on
-
[1]
write newline
" write newline "" before.all 'output.state := FUNCTION n.dashify 't := "" t empty not t #1 #1 substring "-" = t #1 #2 substring "--" = not "--" * t #2 global.max substring 't := t #1 #1 substring "-" = "-" * t #2 global.max substring 't := while if t #1 #1 substring * t #2 global.max substring 't := if while FUNCTION format.date year duplicate empty "emp...
-
[2]
@esa (Ref
\@ifxundefined[1] #1\@undefined \@firstoftwo \@secondoftwo \@ifnum[1] #1 \@firstoftwo \@secondoftwo \@ifx[1] #1 \@firstoftwo \@secondoftwo [2] @ #1 \@temptokena #2 #1 @ \@temptokena \@ifclassloaded agu2001 natbib The agu2001 class already includes natbib coding, so you should not add it explicitly Type <Return> for now, but then later remove the command n...
-
[3]
\@lbibitem[] @bibitem@first@sw\@secondoftwo \@lbibitem[#1]#2 \@extra@b@citeb \@ifundefined br@#2\@extra@b@citeb \@namedef br@#2 \@nameuse br@#2\@extra@b@citeb \@ifundefined b@#2\@extra@b@citeb @num @parse #2 @tmp #1 NAT@b@open@#2 NAT@b@shut@#2 \@ifnum @merge>\@ne @bibitem@first@sw \@firstoftwo \@ifundefined NAT@b*@#2 \@firstoftwo @num @NAT@ctr \@secondoft...
-
[4]
@open @close @open @close and [1] URL: #1 \@ifundefined chapter * \@mkboth \@ifxundefined @sectionbib * \@mkboth * \@mkboth\@gobbletwo \@ifclassloaded amsart * \@ifclassloaded amsbook * \@ifxundefined @heading @heading NAT@ctr thebibliography [1] @ \@biblabel @NAT@ctr \@bibsetup #1 @NAT@ctr @ @openbib .11em \@plus.33em \@minus.07em 4000 4000 `\.\@m @bibit...
-
[5]
Why is sam robust to label noise? In ICLR, 2024
Baek, C., Kolter, Z., and Raghunathan, A. Why is sam robust to label noise? In ICLR, 2024
work page 2024
-
[6]
SCARF : Self-supervised contrastive learning using random feature corruption
Bahri, D., Jiang, H., Tay, Y., and Metzler, D. SCARF : Self-supervised contrastive learning using random feature corruption. In ICLR, 2021
work page 2021
-
[7]
and Guestrin, C
Chen, T. and Guestrin, C. XGB oost: A scalable tree boosting system. In SIGKDD, 2016
2016
-
[8]
Duan, T., Anand, A., Ding, D. Y., Thai, K. K., Basu, S., Ng, A., and Schuler, A. Ngboost: Natural gradient boosting for probabilistic prediction. In International conference on machine learning, pp.\ 2690--2700. PMLR, 2020
work page 2020
Show all 32 references
-
[9]
Gal, Y. et al. Uncertainty in deep learning. phd thesis, University of Cambridge, 2016
2016
-
[10]
Revisiting deep learning models for tabular data
Gorishniy, Y., Rubachev, I., Khrulkov, V., and Babenko, A. Revisiting deep learning models for tabular data. In NeurIPS, 2021
2021
-
[11]
On embeddings for numerical features in tabular deep learning
Gorishniy, Y., Rubachev, I., and Babenko, A. On embeddings for numerical features in tabular deep learning. In NeurIPS, 2022
2022
-
[12]
Tab R : Tabular deep learning meets nearest neighbors
Gorishniy, Y., Rubachev, I., Kartashev, N., Shlenskii, D., Kotelnikov, A., and Babenko, A. Tab R : Tabular deep learning meets nearest neighbors. In ICLR, 2024
2024
-
[13]
Tabm: Advancing tabular deep learning with parameter-efficient ensembling
Gorishniy, Y., Kotelnikov, A., and Babenko, A. Tabm: Advancing tabular deep learning with parameter-efficient ensembling. In ICLR, 2025
2025
-
[14]
Datasets and Benchmarks
Grinsztajn, L., Oyallon, E., and Varoquaux, G. Why do tree-based models still outperform deep learning on typical tabular data? In NeurIPS, the "Datasets and Benchmarks" track, 2022
2022
-
[15]
Tab PFN : A transformer that solves small tabular classification problems in a second
Hollmann, N., Müller, S., Eggensperger, K., and Hutter, F. Tab PFN : A transformer that solves small tabular classification problems in a second. In ICLR, 2023
2023
-
[16]
u ller, S., Purucker, L., Krishnakumar, A., K \
Hollmann, N., M \"u ller, S., Purucker, L., Krishnakumar, A., K \"o rfer, M., Hoo, S. B., Schirrmeister, R. T., and Hutter, F. Accurate predictions on small data with a tabular foundation model. Nature, 637 0 (8045): 0 319--326, 2025
2025
-
[17]
Better by default: Strong pre-tuned mlps and boosted trees on tabular data
Holzm \"u ller, D., Grinsztajn, L., and Steinwart, I. Better by default: Strong pre-tuned mlps and boosted trees on tabular data. In The Thirty-eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2024
2024
-
[18]
TANGOS : Regularizing tabular neural networks through gradient orthogonalization and specialization
Jeffares, A., Liu, T., Crabbé, J., Imrie, F., and van der Schaar, M. TANGOS : Regularizing tabular neural networks through gradient orthogonalization and specialization. In ICLR, 2023
2023
-
[19]
Light GBM : A highly efficient gradient boosting decision tree
Ke, G., Meng, Q., Finley, T., Wang, T., Chen, W., Ma, W., Ye, Q., and Liu, T.-Y. Light GBM : A highly efficient gradient boosting decision tree. Advances in neural information processing systems, 30: 0 3146--3154, 2017
2017
-
[20]
Learning multiple layers of features from tiny images.(2009), 2009
Krizhevsky, A., Hinton, G., et al. Learning multiple layers of features from tiny images.(2009), 2009
2009
-
[21]
Uncertainty in gradient boosting via ensembles
Malinin, A., Prokhorenkova, L., and Ustimenko, A. Uncertainty in gradient boosting via ensembles. In ICLR, 2021
2021
-
[22]
When do neural nets outperform boosted trees on tabular data? Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36: 0 76336--76369, 2023
McElfresh, D., Khandagale, S., Valverde, J., Prasad C, V., Ramakrishnan, G., Goldblum, M., and White, C. When do neural nets outperform boosted trees on tabular data? Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36: 0 76336--76369, 2023
2023
-
[23]
V., and Gulin, A
Prokhorenkova, L., Gusev, G., Vorobev, A., Dorogush, A. V., and Gulin, A. Cat B oost: unbiased boosting with categorical features. In NeurIPS, 2018
2018
-
[24]
Revisiting pretraining objectives for tabular deep learning
Rubachev, I., Alekberov, A., Gorishniy, Y., and Babenko, A. Revisiting pretraining objectives for tabular deep learning. arXiv, 2207.03208v1, 2022
2022 arXiv
-
[25]
TabReD: Analyzing Pitfalls and Filling the Gaps in Tabular Deep Learning Benchmarks
Rubachev, I., Kartashev, N., Gorishniy, Y., and Babenko, A. TabReD: Analyzing Pitfalls and Filling the Gaps in Tabular Deep Learning Benchmarks . In arXiv, 2025
2025
-
[26]
Facenet: A unified embedding for face recognition and clustering
Schroff, F., Kalenichenko, D., and Philbin, J. Facenet: A unified embedding for face recognition and clustering. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 2015
2015
-
[27]
B., and Goldstein, T
Somepalli, G., Goldblum, M., Schwarzschild, A., Bruss, C. B., and Goldstein, T. SAINT: improved neural networks for tabular data via row attention and contrastive pre-training. arXiv, 2106.01342v1, 2021
2021 arXiv
-
[28]
Joint optimization framework for learning with noisy labels, 2018
Tanaka, D., Ikami, D., Yamasaki, T., and Aizawa, K. Joint optimization framework for learning with noisy labels, 2018. URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.11364
2018 arXiv
-
[29]
Thimonier, H., Costa, J. L. D. M., Popineau, F., Rimmel, A., and Doan, B.-L. T-jepa: Augmentation-free self-supervised learning for tabular data. In ICLR, 2024
2024
-
[30]
Unreflected use of tabular data repositories can undermine research quality
Tschalzev, A., Purucker, L., L \"u dtke, S., Hutter, F., Bartelt, C., and Stuckenschmidt, H. Unreflected use of tabular data repositories can undermine research quality. arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.09159, 2025
2025 arXiv
-
[31]
Modern neighborhood components analysis: A deep tabular baseline two decades later
Ye, H.-J., Yin, H.-H., and Zhan, D.-C. Modern neighborhood components analysis: A deep tabular baseline two decades later. arXiv, 2407.03257v1, 2024
2024 arXiv
-
[32]
write newline
" write newline "" before.all 'output.state := FUNCTION n.dashify 't := "" t empty not t #1 #1 substring "-" = t #1 #2 substring "--" = not "--" * t #2 global.max substring 't := t #1 #1 substring "-" = "-" * t #2 global.max substring 't := while if t #1 #1 substring * t #2 gl...
Reviewed August 15, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.
Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.