# Learning vs Retrieval: The Role of In-Context Examples in Regression with Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04318 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04318/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05530/) (2024)
- [Rethinking the Role of Demonstrations: What Makes In-Context Learning Work?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12837/) (2022)
- [What Makes Good In-Context Examples for GPT-3?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06804/) (2021)
- [What Can Transformers Learn In-Context? A Case Study of Simple Function Classes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01066/) (2022)
- [NLP Evaluation in trouble: On the Need to Measure LLM Data Contamination for each Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18018/) (2023)
- [Transformers as Statisticians: Provable In-Context Learning with In-Context Algorithm Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04637/) (2023)
- [Leak, Cheat, Repeat: Data Contamination and Evaluation Malpractices in Closed-Source LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03927/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models(LLMs) on Tabular Data: Prediction, Generation, and Understanding -- A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17944/) (2024)
- [What In-Context Learning "Learns" In-Context: Disentangling Task Recognition and Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09731/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models Are Latent Variable Models: Explaining and Finding Good Demonstrations for In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11916/) (2023)
- [The Learnability of In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07895/) (2023)
- [Ground-Truth Labels Matter: A Deeper Look into Input-Label Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12685/) (2022)
- [Uncovering mesa-optimization algorithms in Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05858/) (2023)
- [A Theory of Emergent In-Context Learning as Implicit Structure Induction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07971/) (2023)
- [Extrapolating Large Language Models to Non-English by Aligning Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04948/) (2023)
- [Understanding In-Context Learning in Transformers and LLMs by Learning to Learn Discrete Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03016/) (2023)
- [Transformers Implement Functional Gradient Descent to Learn Non-Linear Functions In Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06528/) (2023)
- [From Words to Numbers: Your Large Language Model Is Secretly A Capable Regressor When Given In-Context Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07544/) (2024)
- [In-context Learning and Gradient Descent Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07772/) (2023)
- [LLM In-Context Recall is Prompt Dependent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08865/) (2024)
- [What Do Language Models Learn in Context? The Structured Task Hypothesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04216/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Relational Transformer: Toward Zero-Shot Foundation Models for Relational Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06377/) (2025)
- [Extracting Probabilistic Knowledge from Large Language Models for Bayesian Network Parameterization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15918/) (2025)
- [The Atlas of In-Context Learning: How Attention Heads Shape In-Context Retrieval Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15807/) (2025)
- [Information Abundance Paradox: Long-Context Training Undermines Parametric Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12218/) (2026)
- [DUALVIEW: Leveraging Broad and Output-Specific Evidence for LLM-based Multi-Output Text Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19206/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative Large Language Models (LLMs) are capable of being in-context learners. However, the underlying mechanism of in-context learning (ICL) is still a major research question, and experimental research results about how models exploit ICL are not always consistent. In this work, we propose a framework for evaluating in-context learning mechanisms, which we claim are a combination of retrieving internal knowledge and learning from in-context examples by focusing on regression tasks. First, we show that LLMs can solve real-world regression problems and then design experiments to measure the extent to which the LLM retrieves its internal knowledge versus learning from in-context examples. We argue that this process lies on a spectrum between these two extremes. We provide an in-depth analysis of the degrees to which these mechanisms are triggered depending on various factors, such as prior knowledge about the tasks and the type and richness of the information provided by the in-context examples. We employ three LLMs and utilize multiple datasets to corroborate the robustness of our findings. Our results shed light on how to engineer prompts to leverage meta-learning from in-context examples and foster knowledge retrieval depending on the problem being addressed.