Cell Classification for layout recognition in spreadsheets

Research output: Contribution to book/conference proceedings/anthology/reportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Elvis Koci - , TUD Dresden University of Technology, UPC Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Barcelona Tech) (Author)
  • Maik Thiele - , TUD Dresden University of Technology (Author)
  • Oscar Romero - , UPC Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Barcelona Tech) (Author)
  • Wolfgang Lehner - , Chair of Databases (Author)

Abstract

Spreadsheets compose a notably large and valuable dataset of documents within the enterprise settings and on the Web. Although spreadsheets are intuitive to use and equipped with powerful functionalities, extracting and reusing data from them remains a cumbersome and mostly manual task. Their greatest strength, the large degree of freedom they provide to the user, is at the same time also their greatest weakness, since data can be arbitrarily structured. Therefore, in this paper we propose a supervised learning approach for layout recognition in spreadsheets. We work on the cell level, aiming at predicting their correct layout role, out of five predefined alternatives. For this task we have considered a large number of features not covered before by related work. Moreover, we gather a considerably large dataset of annotated cells, from spreadsheets exhibiting variability in format and content. Our experiments, with five different classification algorithms, show that we can predict cell layout roles with high accuracy. Subsequently, in this paper we focus on revising the classification results, with the aim of repairing misclassifications. We propose a sophisticated approach, composed of three steps, which effectively corrects a reasonable number of inaccurate predictions.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationKnowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - 8th International Joint Conference, IC3K 2016, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsDavid Aveiro, Ana Fred, Jan Dietz, Jorge Bernardino, Kecheng Liu, Joaquim Filipe
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages78-100
Number of pages23
ISBN (print)9783319997001
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesCommunications in Computer and Information Science
Volume914
ISSN1865-0929

Conference

Title8th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2016
Duration9 - 11 November 2016
CityPorto
CountryPortugal

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-8107-2775/work/142253495

Keywords

Keywords

  • Analysis, Classification, Document, Layout, Recognition, Speadsheet, Table, Tabular