TabDSR: Decompose, Sanitize, and Reason for Complex Numerical Reasoning in Tabular Data

arXiv:2511.02219v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Complex reasoning over tabular data is crucial in real-world data analysis, yet large language models (LLMs) often underperform due to complex queries, noisy data, and limited numerical capabilities. To address these issues, we propose method, a framework consisting of: (1) a query decomposer that breaks down complex questions, (2) a table sanitizer that cleans and filters noisy tables, and (3) a program-of-thoughts (PoT)-based reasoner that generates executable code to derive the final answer from the sanitized table. To ensure unbiased evaluation and mitigate data leakage, we introduce a new dataset, CalTab151, specifically designed for complex numerical reasoning over tables. Experimental results demonstrate that method consistently outperforms existing methods, achieving state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance with 8.79%, 6.08%, and 19.87% accuracy improvement on TAT-QA, TableBench, and method, respectively. Moreover, our framework integrates seamlessly with mainstream LLMs, providing a robust solution for complex tabular numerical reasoning. These findings highlight the effectiveness of our framework in enhancing LLM performance for complex tabular numerical reasoning. Data and code are available upon request.