Hualin Zeng
2026
ALGOGEN: Tool-Generated Verifiable Traces for Reliable Algorithm Visualization
Liaokunpeng | Yuexiao Ma | Yisheng Lin | Hualin Zeng | Xiawu Zheng | Rongrong Ji
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Liaokunpeng | Yuexiao Ma | Yisheng Lin | Hualin Zeng | Xiawu Zheng | Rongrong Ji
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Algorithm Visualization (AV) helps students build mental models by animating algorithm execution states. Recent LLM-based systems such as CODE2VIDEO generate AV videos in an end-to-end manner. However, this paradigm requires the system to simultaneously simulate algorithm flow and satisfy video rendering constraints (element layout, color schemes, etc.), a complex task that induces LLM hallucinations. This results in reduced execution success rates, element overlap, and inter-frame inconsistencies.To address these challenges, we propose ALGOGEN, a novel paradigm that decouples algorithm execution from rendering. We first introduce Visualization Trace Algebra (VTA), a monoid over algorithm visual states and operations. The LLM then generates a Python tracker that simulates algorithm flow and outputs VTA-JSON traces, a JSON encoding of VTA. For rendering, we define a Rendering Style Language (RSL) to templatize algorithm layouts. A deterministic renderer then compiles algorithm traces with RSL into Manim, LaTeX/TikZ, or Three.js outputs[Manim, TikZ, and Three.js are respectively a Python animation engine, a LaTeX vector graphics package, and a JavaScript 3D rendering library.].Evaluated on a LeetCode AV benchmark of 200 tasks, ALGOGEN achieves an average success rate improvement of 17.3% compared to end-to-end methods (99.8% vs. 82.5%). These results demonstrate that our decoupling paradigm effectively mitigates LLM hallucinations in complex AV tasks, providing a more reliable solution for automated generation of high-quality algorithm visualizations. Demo videos and code are available at: .
2022
Getting the Most out of Simile Recognition
Xiaoyue Wang | Linfeng Song | Xin Liu | Chulun Zhou | Hualin Zeng | Jinsong Su
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2022
Xiaoyue Wang | Linfeng Song | Xin Liu | Chulun Zhou | Hualin Zeng | Jinsong Su
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2022
Simile recognition involves two subtasks: simile sentence classification that discriminates whether a sentence contains simile, and simile component extraction that locates the corresponding objects (i.e., tenors and vehicles).Recent work ignores features other than surface strings and suffers from the data hunger issue.We explore expressive features for this task to help achieve more effective data utilization.In particular, we study two types of features: 1) input-side features that include POS tags, dependency trees and word definitions, and 2) decoding features that capture the interdependence among various decoding decisions.We further construct a model named HGSR, which merges the input-side features as a heterogeneous graph and leverages decoding features via distillation.Experiments show that HGSR significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art systems and carefully designed baselines, verifying the effectiveness of introduced features. We will release our code upon paper acceptance.