Yumeng Fu, Jiayin Zhu, Lingling Zhang, Wenjun Wu, Bo Zhao, Shaoxuan Ma, Yushun Zhang, Jun Liu. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2026.

Charts are widely used for data visualization across various fields, including education, research, and business. Chart Question Answering (CQA) is an emerging task focused on the automatic interpretation and reasoning of data presented in charts. However, chart images are inherently difficult to interpret, and chart-related questions often involve complex logical and numerical reasoning, which hinders the performance of existing models. This paper introduces VProChart, a novel framework designed to address these challenges in CQA by integrating a lightweight Visual Perception Alignment Agent (VPAgent) and a Programmatic Solution Reasoning approach. VPAgent aligns and models chart elements based on principles of human visual perception, enhancing the understanding of chart context. The Programmatic Solution Reasoning approach leverages large language models (LLMs) to transform natural language reasoning questions into structured solution programs, facilitating precise numerical and logical reasoning. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets such as ChartQA and PlotQA demonstrate that VProChart significantly outperforms existing methods, highlighting its capability in understanding and reasoning with charts.

Abstract Discovering the most adaptive learning path and content is an urgent issue for nowadays e‐learning environment, for achieving learning goals efficiently and effectively. The main challenge of building this system is to provide appropriate educational guide and resource for different learners with respective interests and knowledge base. In order to reduce people's cognitive overload and fulfill their self‐learning requirements, this article proposes a framework for a self‐learning system. The system is design to be closed and updated automatically, in which learning path is discovered based on differential evolution (DE) algorithm and knowledge graph. The output of the system includes: (1) the personalized learning path adapted to learner's specific needs; (2) learning resource recommendation matching the learning path; (3) test results of learners' learning effect after following the learning path and resources recommendation; (4) revised learning path and resources recommendation according to learner's evaluation. Experimental results show that the system based on DE algorithm and disciplinary knowledge graph is feasible in optimal learning path discovery and further learning resources recommendation.