Applied Sciences, Vol. 15, Pages 3788: TQAgent: Enhancing Table-Based Question Answering with Knowledge Graphs and Tree-Structured Reasoning

Applied Sciences doi: 10.3390/app15073788

Authors:
Jianbin Zhao
Pengfei Zhang
Yuzhen Wang
Rui Xin
Xiuyuan Lu
Ripeng Li
Shuai Lyu
Zhonghong Ou
Meina Song

Table-based question answering (TableQA) has emerged as an important task in natural language processing, yet existing models face challenges in handling complex reasoning and mitigating hallucinations, especially when dealing with diverse table structures. We introduce TQAgent, a framework designed to enhance table-based reasoning by incorporating knowledge graphs and tree-structured reasoning paths. TQAgent reduces hallucinations and improves model reliability by grounding reasoning in external knowledge and dynamically sampling high-confidence paths. Additionally, it employs knowledge distillation techniques for lightweight deployment. Experimental results on the TabFact, WikiTQ, and FeTaQA datasets show significant performance improvements, with accuracy increases of up to 4% over baseline models. TQAgent’s dynamic operation planning and knowledge graph integration enable effective multi-step reasoning and better handling of diverse table data. Furthermore, the framework achieves state-of-the-art results, surpassing traditional large-scale models in both reasoning accuracy and computational efficiency. These findings open new avenues for future research in table-based question answering and model deployment optimization.

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Jianbin Zhao www.mdpi.com