Triples as the Key: Structuring Makes Decomposition and Verification Easier in LLM-based TableQA

As the mainstream approach, LLMs have been widely applied and researched in TableQA tasks. Currently, the core of LLM-based TableQA methods typically include three phases: question decomposition, sub-question TableQA reasoning, and answer verification. However, several challenges remain in this process: i) Sub-questions generated by these methods often exhibit significant gaps with the original question due to critical information overlooked during the LLM's direct decomposition; ii) Verification of answers is typically challenging because LLMs tend to generate optimal responses during self-correct. To address these challenges, we propose a Triple-Inspired Decomposition and vErification (TIDE) strategy, which leverages the structural properties of triples to assist in decomposition and verification in TableQA. The inherent structure of triples (head entity, relation, tail entity) requires the LLM to extract as many entities and relations from the question as possible. Unlike direct decomposition methods that may overlook key information, our transformed sub-questions using triples encompass more critical details. Additionally, this explicit structure facilitates verification. By comparing the triples derived from the answers with those from the question decomposition, we can achieve easier and more straightforward verification than when relying on the LLM's self-correct tendencies. By employing triples alongside established LLM modes, Direct Prompting and Agent modes, TIDE achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple TableQA datasets, demonstrating the effectiveness of our method. We release our code here.