# ODUTQA-MDC: A Task for Open-Domain Underspecified Tabular QA with Multi-turn Dialogue-based Clarification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10159 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10159/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07104/) (2023)
- [Spider: A Large-Scale Human-Labeled Dataset for Complex and Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing and Text-to-SQL Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08887/) (2018)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models(LLMs) on Tabular Data: Prediction, Generation, and Understanding -- A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17944/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Meet NLP: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12819/) (2024)
- [A Co-Interactive Transformer for Joint Slot Filling and Intent Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03880/) (2020)
- [Open-WikiTable: Dataset for Open Domain Question Answering with Complex Reasoning over Table](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07288/) (2023)
- [AMBROSIA: A Benchmark for Parsing Ambiguous Questions into Database Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19073/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking and Improving Text-to-SQL Generation under Ambiguity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13659/) (2023)
- [PURPLE: Making a Large Language Model a Better SQL Writer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20014/) (2024)
- [OpenTab: Advancing Large Language Models as Open-domain Table Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14361/) (2024)
- [Improving Generalization in Language Model-Based Text-to-SQL Semantic Parsing: Two Simple Semantic Boundary-Based Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17378/) (2023)
- [PRACTIQ: A Practical Conversational Text-to-SQL dataset with Ambiguous and Unanswerable Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11076/) (2024)
- [Optimizing Question Semantic Space for Dynamic Retrieval-Augmented Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00491/) (2025)
- [RETQA: A Large-Scale Open-Domain Tabular Question Answering Dataset for Real Estate Sector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10104/) (2024)
- [ORPP: Self-Optimizing Role-playing Prompts to Enhance Language Model Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02480/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [GroupTravelBench: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Multi-Person Travel Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25200/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The advancement of large language models (LLMs) has enhanced tabular question answering (Tabular QA), yet they struggle with open-domain queries exhibiting underspecified or uncertain expressions. To address this, we introduce the ODUTQA-MDC task and the first comprehensive benchmark to tackle it. This benchmark includes: (1) a large-scale ODUTQA dataset with 209 tables and 25,105 QA pairs; (2) a fine-grained labeling scheme for detailed evaluation; and (3) a dynamic clarification interface that simulates user feedback for interactive assessment. We also propose MAIC-TQA, a multi-agent framework that excels at detecting ambiguities, clarifying them through dialogue, and refining answers. Experiments validate our benchmark and framework, establishing them as a key resource for advancing conversational, underspecification-aware Tabular QA research.