Papers › Efficient Generator of Mathematical Expressions for Symbolic Regression

Efficient Generator of Mathematical Expressions for Symbolic Regression

20 Feb 2023arXiv:2302.09893archive 2025-07-28

Sebastian Mežnar, Sašo Džeroski, Ljupčo Todorovski

We propose an approach to symbolic regression based on a novel variational autoencoder for generating hierarchical structures, HVAE. It combines simple atomic units with shared weights to recursively encode and decode the individual nodes in the hierarchy. Encoding is performed bottom-up and decoding top-down. We empirically show that HVAE can be trained efficiently with small corpora of mathematical expressions and can accurately encode expressions into a smooth low-dimensional latent space. The latter can be efficiently explored with various optimization methods to address the task of symbolic regression. Indeed, random search through the latent space of HVAE performs better than random search through expressions generated by manually crafted probabilistic grammars for mathematical expressions. Finally, EDHiE system for symbolic regression, which applies an evolutionary algorithm to the latent space of HVAE, reconstructs equations from a standard symbolic regression benchmark better than a state-of-the-art system based on a similar combination of deep learning and evolutionary algorithms.\v{z}

PaperPDFCode

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

Code

smeznar/hvae officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorchBSD-3-Clause report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Tasks

Evolutionary AlgorithmsSymbolic Regressionregression

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

Random Search

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections