The Standardization Trap: Certifying Joint Label Processing in Tabular Foundation Models

תקציר מקורי באנגליתarXiv:2610.08314v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Linear regression and kernel smoothing offer tractable explanations of in-context learning: in both, the features determine the weight assigned to each context label. However, whether this fixed-weight account describes pretrained tabular foundation models (TFMs) remains unclear. Testing this account using derivatives runs into a standardization trap: public TFM packages standardize the labels before the model sees them, yet ordinary derivatives also reflect behavior outside the set of standardized labels, making a model appear nonlinear even when every prediction it makes agrees with a fixed-weight map. We propose two certificates that depend only on predictions at standardized labels and can reject two distinct explanations: fixed-weight