mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Mixture-of-Minds: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding

arXiv 2510.20176 ↗First posted 23 Oct 2025cs.CL cs.AIcited by 6

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Reinforcement learning for LLM agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Understanding and reasoning over tables is a critical capability for many real-world applications. Large language models (LLMs) have shown promise on this task, but current approaches remain limited. Fine-tuning based methods strengthen language reasoning; yet they are prone to arithmetic errors and hallucination. In contrast, tool-based methods enable precise table manipulation but rely on rigid schemas and lack semantic understanding. These complementary drawbacks highlight the need for approaches that integrate robust reasoning with reliable table processing. In this work, we propose Mixture-of-Minds, a multi-agent framework that decomposes table reasoning into three specialized roles: planning, coding, and answering. This design enables each agent to focus on a specific aspect of the task while leveraging code execution for precise table manipulation. Building on this workflow, we introduce a self-improvement training framework that employs Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) rollouts to generate pseudo-gold trajectories and optimize agents with reinforcement learning (RL). Extensive experiments show that Mixture-of-Minds delivers substantial gains, reaching 62.13% on TableBench and surpassing OpenAI-o4-mini-high. These results demonstrate the promise of combining structured multi-agent workflows with RL to advance table understanding.

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for LLM agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 47 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2025.

Builds on

47 of 59 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025The Landscape of Agentic Reinforcement Learning for LLMs: A Survey2 Sep
  2. 2025PilotRL: Training Language Model Agents via Global Planning-Guided Progressive Reinforcement Learning1 Aug
  3. 2025ReTool: Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Tool Use in LLMs15 Apr

Other references · 44

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  2. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  4. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  5. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  6. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  7. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  8. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
  9. 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scalecited by 2,678
  10. 2025Gemma 3 Technical Reportcited by 1,686
  11. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,371
  12. 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,311
32 more
  1. 2021FinQA: A Dataset of Numerical Reasoning over Financial Datacited by 552
  2. 2015Compositional Semantic Parsing on Semi-Structured Tablescited by 509
  3. 2019TabFact: A Large-scale Dataset for Table-based Fact Verificationcited by 425
  4. 2023Text-to-SQL Empowered by Large Language Models: A Benchmark Evaluationcited by 378
  5. 2024LLMs Know More Than They Show: On the Intrinsic Representation of LLM Hallucinationscited by 230
  6. 2025A Survey on Test-Time Scaling in Large Language Models: What, How, Where, and How Well?cited by 215
  7. 2025Why Language Models Hallucinatecited by 205
  8. 2025Deep Think with Confidencecited by 199
  9. 2024Chain-of-Table: Evolving Tables in the Reasoning Chain for Table Understandingcited by 185
  10. 2021MultiModalQA: Complex Question Answering over Text, Tables and Imagescited by 177
  11. 2023Large Language Models are Versatile Decomposers: Decompose Evidence and Questions for Table-based Reasoningcited by 177
  12. 2024Large Language Models(LLMs) on Tabular Data: Prediction, Generation, and Understanding -- A Surveycited by 157
  13. 2024TableBench: A Comprehensive and Complex Benchmark for Table Question Answeringcited by 127
  14. 2023Table Meets LLM: Can Large Language Models Understand Structured Table Data? A Benchmark and Empirical Studycited by 116
  15. 2025VTool-R1: VLMs Learn to Think with Images via Reinforcement Learning on Multimodal Tool Usecited by 84
  16. 2023ReAcTable: Enhancing ReAct for Table Question Answeringcited by 76
  17. 2024TableLLM: Enabling Tabular Data Manipulation by LLMs in Real Office Usage Scenarioscited by 76
  18. 2024A Survey on Employing Large Language Models for Text-to-SQL Taskscited by 67
  19. 2021AIT-QA: Question Answering Dataset over Complex Tables in the Airline Industrycited by 44
  20. 2023SQL-PaLM: Improved Large Language Model Adaptation for Text-to-SQL (extended)cited by 42
  21. 2022A Survey on Table Question Answering: Recent Advancescited by 41
  22. 2025Table-R1: Region-based Reinforcement Learning for Table Understandingcited by 35
  23. 2024A Survey of Table Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 29
  24. 2025LLM Probability Concentration: How Alignment Shrinks the Generative Horizoncited by 26
  25. 2019Answering Conversational Questions on Structured Data without Logical Formscited by 24
  26. 2025Table-R1: Inference-Time Scaling for Table Reasoningcited by 23
  27. 2025Reasoning-Table: Exploring Reinforcement Learning for Table Reasoningcited by 18
  28. 2025Breaking the SFT Plateau: Multimodal Structured Reinforcement Learning for Chart-to-Code Generationcited by 18
  29. 2025LLM/Agent-as-Data-Analyst: A Surveycited by 15
  30. 2025The Validation Gap: A Mechanistic Analysis of How Language Models Compute Arithmetic but Fail to Validate Itcited by 10
  31. 2024ALTER: Augmentation for Large-Table-Based Reasoningcited by 9
  32. 2025Structured Prompting and Feedback-Guided Reasoning with LLMs for Data Interpretationcited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025TableMind: An Autonomous Programmatic Agent for Tool-Augmented Table Reasoning
  2. 2026TableMind++: An Uncertainty-Aware Programmatic Agent for Tool-Augmented Table Reasoning
  3. 2025STaR: Towards Effective and Stable Table Reasoning via Slow-Thinking Large Language Models
  4. 2025TableGPT-R1: Advancing Tabular Reasoning Through Reinforcement Learning
  5. 2025Table-Critic: A Multi-Agent Framework for Collaborative Criticism and Refinement in Table Reasoning
  6. 2025Formula-R1: Incentivizing LLM Reasoning over Complex Tables with Numerical Computation via Formula-Driven Reinforcement Learning
  7. 2025Table-r1: Self-supervised and Reinforcement Learning for Program-based Table Reasoning in Small Language Models
  8. 2026TabTracer: Monte Carlo Tree Search for Complex Table Reasoning with Large Language Models