{"id":1148067,"date":"2025-08-18T02:30:35","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T09:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=1148067"},"modified":"2025-08-18T12:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T19:40:12","slug":"on-evaluating-llms-capabilities-as-functional-approximators-a-bayesian-perspective","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/on-evaluating-llms-capabilities-as-functional-approximators-a-bayesian-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"On Evaluating LLMs&#8217; Capabilities as Functional Approximators: A Bayesian Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recent works have successfully applied Large Language Models (LLMs) to function modeling tasks. However, the reasons behind this success remain unclear. In this work, we propose a new evaluation framework to comprehensively assess LLMs&#8217; function modeling abilities. By adopting a Bayesian perspective of function modeling, we discover that LLMs are relatively weak in understanding patterns in raw data, but excel at utilizing prior knowledge about the domain to develop a strong understanding of the underlying function. Our findings offer new insights about the strengths and limitations of LLMs in the context of function modeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recent works have successfully applied Large Language Models (LLMs) to function modeling tasks. However, the reasons behind this success remain unclear. In this work, we propose a new evaluation framework to comprehensively assess LLMs&#8217; function modeling abilities. By adopting a Bayesian perspective of function modeling, we discover that LLMs are relatively weak in understanding patterns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"COLING 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