README.md

---
license: cc-by-sa-4.0
task_categories:
- text-generation
language:
- en
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
configs:
- config_name: github_prs
  data_files:
  - split: validation
    path: github_prs/validation-*
- config_name: numerical
  data_files:
  - split: validation
    path: numerical/validation-*
- config_name: poetry
  data_files:
  - split: validation
    path: poetry/validation-*
dataset_info:
- config_name: github_prs
  features:
  - name: id
    dtype: int64
  - name: original_context
    dtype: string
  - name: modified_context
    dtype: string
  - name: omitted_context
    sequence: string
  - name: omitted_index
    sequence: int64
  - name: metadata
    struct:
    - name: additions
      dtype: int64
    - name: author
      dtype: string
    - name: deletions
      dtype: int64
    - name: html_url
      dtype: string
    - name: issue_id
      dtype: int64
    - name: merged_at
      dtype: string
    - name: omission_probability
      dtype: float64
    - name: pr_number
      dtype: int64
    - name: repo
      dtype: string
    - name: title
      dtype: string
    - name: total_changes
      dtype: int64
  splits:
  - name: validation
    num_bytes: 9578209
    num_examples: 887
  download_size: 3431644
  dataset_size: 9578209
- config_name: numerical
  features:
  - name: id
    dtype: int64
  - name: original_context
    dtype: string
  - name: modified_context
    dtype: string
  - name: omitted_context
    sequence: string
  - name: omitted_index
    sequence: int64
  - name: metadata
    struct:
    - name: max_num
      dtype: int64
    - name: min_num
      dtype: int64
    - name: n_numbers
      dtype: int64
    - name: n_omitted
      dtype: int64
    - name: omission_probability
      dtype: float64
    - name: order
      dtype: string
    - name: step_size
      dtype: int64
  splits:
  - name: validation
    num_bytes: 7175806
    num_examples: 1200
  download_size: 4970832
  dataset_size: 7175806
- config_name: poetry
  features:
  - name: id
    dtype: int64
  - name: original_context
    dtype: string
  - name: modified_context
    dtype: string
  - name: omitted_context
    sequence: string
  - name: omitted_index
    sequence: int64
  - name: metadata
    struct:
    - name: n_omitted
      dtype: int64
    - name: omission_probability
      dtype: float64
    - name: poem_length
      dtype: int64
  splits:
  - name: validation
    num_bytes: 44217657
    num_examples: 1191
  download_size: 29473174
  dataset_size: 44217657
---
# AbsenceBench: Language Models Can't Tell What's Missing
[[paper]](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11440) [[code]](https://github.com/harvey-fin/absence-bench)

# Dataset Card for AbsenceBench

AbsenceBench covers three distinct domains:
- Poetry (realistic)
- Numerical sequences (synthetic)
- GitHub pull requests (realistic)

There are 4302 instances in total, with an average context length of 5K tokens.

## Data Structure
Each domain contains the following features:
- `original_context`: `string`
- `modified_context`: `string`
- `omitted_context`: `List[string]`
- `omitted_index`: `List[int]` 
- `metadata`: `Dict` Extra information regarding the dataset generation

### Data Split
Currently we provide only the `validation` split. Since all instances of AbsenceBench natually come up with labeled answers according to the task setting, we will not be able to provide an unlabeled `test` split.

## Dataset Construction
We provide the source data for generating the poetry domain, originally from the [Gutenberg Poetry Corpus](https://github.com/aparrish/gutenberg-poetry-corpus) in the `poetry_raw` subset.
Please refer to this [repo](https://github.com/harvey-fin/absence-bench) for scripts and more information.

## Citation
If you find this work useful, please cite our paper:
```Bibtex
@misc{fu2025absencebenchlanguagemodelscant,
      title={AbsenceBench: Language Models Can't Tell What's Missing}, 
      author={Harvey Yiyun Fu and Aryan Shrivastava and Jared Moore and Peter West and Chenhao Tan and Ari Holtzman},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2506.11440},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11440}, 
}
```