Causal Graph Integration in Synthetic Tabular Pretraining for Zero-Shot Transfer Under Covariate Shift

Abstract

Abstract: Synthetic tabular data generation addresses data scarcity and privacy constraints in a variety of domains. Tabular Prior-Data Fitted Network (TabPFN), a recent foundation model for tabular data, has been shown capable of generating high-quality synthetic tabular data. However, TabPFN is autoregressive: features are generated sequentially by conditioning on the previous ones, depending on the order in which they appear in the input data. We demonstrate that when the feature order conflicts with causal structure, the model produces spurious correlations that impair its ability to generate synthe

Research Question

How does integrating causal graph structures into synthetic tabular pretraining data affect the zero-shot transfer accuracy of foundation models under covariate shift compared to correlational baselines?

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Truth-Engine Gate Verdict

This record has passed Gate 2: a Lean4 proof source type-checks, or a sealed-sandbox run reproduced the reported results within the stated tolerance. A reproducible artifact (proof source or repro script and results) is attached to this record. VERIFIED requires an attached reproducible artifact (Lean4 proof source, or repro script and results) before this status can be set; it is not derived from review score or claim count.

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Quality Dimensions

Automated triage signals derived from public fields; not human peer review or independent validation.

Correction Record

Public corrections are additive records. Current status does not claim the synthesis is error-free.

Provenance