SBU-NLP at SemEval-2025 Task 8: Self-Correction and Collaboration in LLMs for Tabular Question Answering

Rashin Rahnamoun, Mehrnoush Shamsfard


Abstract
This paper explains the submission of the SBU-NLP team at SemEval-2025 Task 8: question-answering over tabular data. We present a novel algorithm for this task, aimed at systems capable of interpreting large tables and providing accurate answers to natural language queries. The evaluation uses the DataBench dataset, which covers a wide range of topics and reflects the complexity of real-world tabular data. Our approach incorporates a self-correction mechanism that iteratively refines LLM-generated code to address errors and prevent common mistakes. Additionally, a multi-LLM collaborative strategy is employed to generate answers, where responses from multiple LLMs are compared, and the majority consensus or a valid alternative is selected. The method relies exclusively on open-source models, avoiding costly processes like training or fine-tuning. Experimental results demonstrate that combining multiple LLMs with self-correction leads to significant performance improvements. However, challenges arise with list-based answers and responses involving multiple numerical, string, or boolean values, where further refinement is needed. The proposed simple system was among the top performers in both Subtask A and Subtask B among open-source models in the competition.
Anthology ID:
2025.semeval-1.97
Volume:
Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2025)
Month:
July
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Sara Rosenthal, Aiala Rosá, Debanjan Ghosh, Marcos Zampieri
Venues:
SemEval | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
703–711
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-08/2025.semeval-1.97/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Rashin Rahnamoun and Mehrnoush Shamsfard. 2025. SBU-NLP at SemEval-2025 Task 8: Self-Correction and Collaboration in LLMs for Tabular Question Answering. In Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2025), pages 703–711, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
SBU-NLP at SemEval-2025 Task 8: Self-Correction and Collaboration in LLMs for Tabular Question Answering (Rahnamoun & Shamsfard, SemEval 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-08/2025.semeval-1.97.pdf