Domain-Aware Scaling Laws Uncover Data Synergy

Machine learning progress is often attributed to scaling model size and dataset volume, yet the composition of data can be just as consequential. Empirical findings repeatedly show that combining datasets from different domains yields nontrivial interactions: adding code improves mathematical reasoning, while certain mixtures introduce interference that suppresses performance. We refer to these effects collectively as data synergy—interaction effects whereby the joint contribution of multiple domains exceeds (positive synergy) or falls short of (interference) the sum of their isolated contributions. In this work, we formalize and quantify dataset interactions in large language models. Leveraging observational variation across open-weight LLMs with diverse pretraining mixtures, we estimate both direct domain-to-benchmark synergy (how one domain contributes to performance on another) and pretraining data synergy (capabilities that require co-occurrence of multiple domains). Our framework improves predictive accuracy over domain-agnostic scaling laws, recovers stable synergy patterns such as math–code complementarity, and yields interpretable maps of cross-domain transfer. These results demonstrate that understanding and exploiting data synergy is essential for designing data mixtures and curating corpora in the next generation of foundation models.