14.4LGSep 27, 2025Code
CoDA: Coding LM via Diffusion AdaptationHaolin Chen, Shiyu Wang, Can Qin et al.
Diffusion language models promise bidirectional context and infilling capabilities that autoregressive coders lack, yet practical systems remain heavyweight. We introduce CoDA, a 1.7B-parameter diffusion coder trained on TPU with a fully open-source training pipeline. CoDA pairs large-scale diffusion pre-training with code-centric mid-training and instruction tuning, enabling confidence-guided sampling that keeps inference latency competitive. On Humaneval, MBPP, and EvalPlus, CoDA-1.7B-Instruct matches or surpasses diffusion models up to 7B parameters. Our release includes model checkpoints, evaluation harnesses, and TPU training pipelines to accelerate research on lightweight diffusion-based coding assistants.
22.0LGFeb 3, 2025
Position: Empowering Time Series Reasoning with Multimodal LLMsYaxuan Kong, Yiyuan Yang, Shiyu Wang et al.
Understanding time series data is crucial for multiple real-world applications. While large language models (LLMs) show promise in time series tasks, current approaches often rely on numerical data alone, overlooking the multimodal nature of time-dependent information, such as textual descriptions, visual data, and audio signals. Moreover, these methods underutilize LLMs' reasoning capabilities, limiting the analysis to surface-level interpretations instead of deeper temporal and multimodal reasoning. In this position paper, we argue that multimodal LLMs (MLLMs) can enable more powerful and flexible reasoning for time series analysis, enhancing decision-making and real-world applications. We call on researchers and practitioners to leverage this potential by developing strategies that prioritize trust, interpretability, and robust reasoning in MLLMs. Lastly, we highlight key research directions, including novel reasoning paradigms, architectural innovations, and domain-specific applications, to advance time series reasoning with MLLMs.
3.3AIMay 25, 2025
Using Large Language Models to Assess Teachers' Pedagogical Content KnowledgeYaxuan Yang, Shiyu Wang, Xiaoming Zhai
Assessing teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) through performance-based tasks is both time and effort-consuming. While large language models (LLMs) offer new opportunities for efficient automatic scoring, little is known about whether LLMs introduce construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) in ways similar to or different from traditional machine learning (ML) and human raters. This study examines three sources of CIV -- scenario variability, rater severity, and rater sensitivity to scenario -- in the context of video-based constructed-response tasks targeting two PCK sub-constructs: analyzing student thinking and evaluating teacher responsiveness. Using generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs), we compared variance components and rater-level scoring patterns across three scoring sources: human raters, supervised ML, and LLM. Results indicate that scenario-level variance was minimal across tasks, while rater-related factors contributed substantially to CIV, especially in the more interpretive Task II. The ML model was the most severe and least sensitive rater, whereas the LLM was the most lenient. These findings suggest that the LLM contributes to scoring efficiency while also introducing CIV as human raters do, yet with varying levels of contribution compared to supervised ML. Implications for rater training, automated scoring design, and future research on model interpretability are discussed.