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Can Deep Neural Networks Predict Data Correlations from Column Names? (arxiv.org)
2 points by PaulHoule on Sep 20, 2023 | hide | past | pdf | 1 comment on HN

In plain words: Using thousands of Kaggle datasets, a study checked whether language models can spot column pairs with correlated values just by reading their names. The names alone did carry real signal, and longer names with more words worked best.

Abstract

Recent publications suggest using natural language analysis on database schema elements to guide tuning and profiling efforts. The underlying hypothesis is that state-of-the-art language processing methods, so-called language models, are able to extract information on data properties from schema text. This paper examines that hypothesis in the context of data correlation analysis: is it possible to find column pairs with correlated data by analyzing their names via language models? First, the paper introduces a novel benchmark for data correlation analysis, created by analyzing thousands of Kaggle data sets (and available for download). Second, it uses that data to study the ability of language models to predict correlation, based on column names. The analysis covers different language models, various correlation metrics, and a multitude of accuracy metrics. It pinpoints factors that contribute to successful predictions, such as the length of column names as well as the ratio of words. Finally, \rev{the study analyzes the impact of column types on prediction performance.} The results show that schema text can be a useful source of information and inform future research efforts, targeted at NLP-enhanced database tuning and data profiling.

Immanuel Trummer
arXiv:2107.04553 · cs.DB, cs.CL · submitted Jul 9, 2021 · updated Sep 11, 2023
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I worked at a place where we used a text convolutional neural network to jointly classify the combination of a cell and a column name so this takes me back to those times.