mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Call for Action: towards the next generation of symbolic regression benchmark

arXiv 2505.03977 ↗First posted 6 May 2025cs.LG cs.NEcited by 17

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Abstract (arXiv)

Symbolic Regression (SR) is a powerful technique for discovering interpretable mathematical expressions. However, benchmarking SR methods remains challenging due to the diversity of algorithms, datasets, and evaluation criteria. In this work, we present an updated version of SRBench. Our benchmark expands the previous one by nearly doubling the number of evaluated methods, refining evaluation metrics, and using improved visualizations of the results to understand the performances. Additionally, we analyze trade-offs between model complexity, accuracy, and energy consumption. Our results show that no single algorithm dominates across all datasets. We propose a call for action from SR community in maintaining and evolving SRBench as a living benchmark that reflects the state-of-the-art in symbolic regression, by standardizing hyperparameter tuning, execution constraints, and computational resource allocation. We also propose deprecation criteria to maintain the benchmark's relevance and discuss best practices for improving SR algorithms, such as adaptive hyperparameter tuning and energy-efficient implementations.

Key facts. Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 May 2025.

Builds on

19 of 60 references.

References · 19

  1. 2019AI Feynman: a Physics-Inspired Method for Symbolic Regressioncited by 548
  2. 2021Contemporary Symbolic Regression Methods and their Relative Performancecited by 215
  3. 2022End-to-end symbolic regression with transformerscited by 203
  4. 2021Neural Symbolic Regression that Scalescited by 192
  5. 2020The Hardware Lotterycited by 160
  6. 2018Learning Equations for Extrapolation and Controlcited by 156
  7. 2017PMLB: A Large Benchmark Suite for Machine Learning Evaluation and Comparisoncited by 140
  8. 2022Interpretable Scientific Discovery with Symbolic Regression: A Reviewcited by 105
  9. 2023Transformer-based Planning for Symbolic Regressioncited by 79
  10. 2019Bayesian Symbolic Regressioncited by 78
  11. 2020PMLB v1.0: An open source dataset collection for benchmarking machine learning methodscited by 58
  12. 2022Eco2AI: carbon emissions tracking of machine learning models as the first step towards sustainable AIcited by 58
7 more
  1. 2022Rethinking Symbolic Regression Datasets and Benchmarks for Scientific Discoverycited by 46
  2. 2018Where are we now? A large benchmark study of recent symbolic regression methodscited by 44
  3. 2018Learning concise representations for regression by evolving networks of treescited by 33
  4. 2021An Approach to Symbolic Regression Using Feyncited by 20
  5. 2018A Greedy Search Tree Heuristic for Symbolic Regressioncited by 17
  6. 2021Symbolic Regression by Exhaustive Search: Reducing the Search Space Using Syntactical Constraints and Efficient Semantic Structure Deduplicationcited by 17
  7. 2022Data types as a more ergonomic frontend for Grammar-Guided Genetic Programmingcited by 3

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 5; 2026: 12.

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  1. 2025Position: Biology is the Challenge Physics-Informed ML Needs to Evolvecited by 4
  2. 2026LLM-ODE: Data-driven Discovery of Dynamical Systems with Large Language Modelscited by 4
  3. 2025Beyond Accuracy and Complexity: The Effective Information Criterion for Structurally Stable Symbolic Regressioncited by 1
  4. 2025Towards symbolic regression for interpretable clinical decision scorescited by 1
  5. 2025Exploring Multi-view Symbolic Regression methods in physical sciencescited by 0
  6. 2025Multi-task GINN-LP for Multi-target Symbolic Regressioncited by 0
  7. 2026Symbolic Regression for Shared Expressions: Introducing Partial Parameter Sharingcited by 0
  8. 2026Improving Evaluation of Recombination-based Cartesian Genetic Programmingcited by 0
  9. 2026EditSR: Enhancing Neural Symbolic Regression via Edit-based Rectificationcited by 0
  10. 2026ERBench: A Benchmark and Testsuite for Equation Discovery Algorithmscited by 0
  11. 2026Validating Causal Abstraction Metrics on Simulated Complex Systemscited by 0
  12. 2026Bayesian Symbolic Regression with Entropic Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
5 more
  1. 2026LLMs as Post-hoc Auditors of Physiological Plausibility in Symbolic Regression: A Clinician-Evaluated Case Studycited by 0
  2. 2026Not Every Term Adds New Structure: Sobolev Novelty for Symbolic Regressioncited by 0
  3. 2026SymbolicArena: A Unified Infrastructure for Benchmark Distillation and Dynamic Evaluation in Symbolic Regressioncited by 0
  4. 2026EvoMO-SR: Multiobjective LLM-based Evolution of Symbolic Expressions with substructure guidancecited by 0
  5. 2026Improving Neural Symbolic Regression with a Diverse Prior and Post-training Alignmentcited by 0