Deep Symbolic Regression for Recurrent Sequences

Abstract

Symbolic regression, i.e. predicting a function from the observation of its values, is well-known to be a challenging task. In this paper, we train Transformers to infer the function or recurrence relation underlying sequences of integers or floats, a typical task in human IQ tests which has hardly been tackled in the machine learning literature. We evaluate our integer model on a subset of OEIS sequences, and show that it outperforms built-in Mathematica functions for recurrence prediction. We also demonstrate that our float model is able to yield informative approximations of out-of-vocabulary functions and constants, e.g. bessel0(x) (x)+(x) x and 1.644934 ^2/6. An interactive demonstration of our models is provided at https://symbolicregression.metademolab.com.

Tasks

Reproductions