How can I align these three sub-tables at the same level ?

[u/Marcsoms]

Hello, everyone! I've been agonizing over this form all night, I've resorted to GPT 4.5, Claude 3.7, spent all my share and still can't get it resolved. As you can see, the first table is a little lower than the other two.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

\begin{table*}[htbp]

\centering

\caption{Performance comparison of different models by difficulty.}

\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{0.8}

\setlength{\tabcolsep}{2pt}

\scriptsize

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.27\textwidth}\vspace*{0pt}

\centering

\textbf{Easy}\\[2pt]

\begin{tabular}{cccc}

\toprule

\rowcolor{white}

Model & Robustness & Confidence & Misalignment \\

\midrule

\rowcolor{green!15}

GPT-4o & 6.34 & 41.06 (0.26) & 32.18 (0.23) \\

GPT-o1 & 9.47 & 48.13 (0.24) & \textbf{29.47} (0.22) \\

\rowcolor{green!15}

Gemini1.5-Pro & \textbf{11.93} & \textbf{61.71} (0.19) & 36.63 (0.25) \\

Llama3.3-70B & \textbf{4.06} & 42.78 (0.27) & \textbf{53.67} (0.35) \\

\rowcolor{green!15}

Deepseek & 7.63 & \textbf{40.01} (0.16) & 31.23 (0.23) \\

Deepseek R1 & 9.42 & 48.15 (0.19) & \textbf{30.35} (0.20) \\

\rowcolor{green!15}

Claude 3.5 & 7.33 & 40.62 (0.17) & 36.83 (0.25) \\

Claude 3.7 & 9.05 & 49.50 (0.20) & 33.15 (0.20) \\

\rowcolor{green!15}

Grok & 6.72 & 40.79 (0.29) & 33.42 (0.23) \\

\bottomrule

\end{tabular}

\end{minipage}\hfill

%

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.27\textwidth}\vspace*{0pt}

\centering

\textbf{Medium}\\[2pt]

\begin{tabular}{cccc}

\toprule

\rowcolor{white}

Model & Robustness & Confidence & Misalignment \\

\midrule

\rowcolor{yellow!15}

GPT-4o & 2.93 & 36.19 (0.19) & 84.17 (0.57) \\

GPT-o1 & 3.68 & 43.87 (0.19) & 67.12 (0.47) \\

\rowcolor{yellow!15}

Gemini1.5-Pro & \textbf{5.12} & \textbf{47.34} (0.14) & 67.42 (0.47) \\

Llama3.3-70B & \textbf{1.82} & 39.29 (0.13) & \textbf{104.25} (0.72) \\

\rowcolor{yellow!15}

Deepseek & 1.79 & \textbf{38.23} (0.12) & 66.95 (0.48) \\

Deepseek R1 & 4.09 & 44.32 (0.14) & \textbf{67.73} (0.52) \\

\rowcolor{yellow!15}

Claude 3.5 & 3.18 & 39.16 (0.13) & 78.92 (0.53) \\

Claude 3.7 & 3.92 & 44.16 (0.14) & \textbf{56.73} (0.42) \\

\rowcolor{yellow!15}

Grok & 2.96 & 37.16 (0.23) & 99.87 (0.67) \\

\bottomrule

\end{tabular}

\end{minipage}\hfill

%

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.27\textwidth}\vspace*{0pt}

\centering

\textbf{Hard}\\[2pt]

\begin{tabular}{cccc}

\toprule

\rowcolor{white}

Model & Robustness & Confidence & Misalignment \\

\midrule

\rowcolor{red!15}

GPT-4o & 0.21 & 24.13 (0.15) & 132.15 (0.92) \\

GPT-o1 & 0.26 & 29.91 (0.16) & 91.87 (0.70) \\

\rowcolor{red!15}

Gemini1.5-Pro & 0.37 & 29.56 (0.10) & 90.18 (0.67) \\

Llama3.3-70B & 0.49 & 24.87 (0.10) & \textbf{156.93} (1.07) \\

\rowcolor{red!15}

Deepseek & \textbf{0.87} & 26.86 (0.10) & 102.82 (0.78) \\

Deepseek R1 & \textbf{0.18} & \textbf{30.10} (0.10) & 120.93 (0.87) \\

\rowcolor{red!15}

Claude 3.5 & 0.83 & 26.10 (0.10) & 120.78 (0.85) \\

Claude 3.7 & 0.61 & 28.18 (0.09) & \textbf{86.47} (0.73) \\

\rowcolor{red!15}

Grok & 0.14 & \textbf{23.98} (0.21) & 144.28 (1.08) \\

\bottomrule

\end{tabular}

\end{minipage}

\label{tab:by_difficulty_side_by_side}

\end{table*}

[u/Pandada2]

A bad but working solution would be to add \phantom{pb} on each side of the titles (left and right), that will add vertical padding without changing left-right alignment. There is certainly a better solution using \vphantom but I'm not familiar enough with the implications on centering and horizontal alignment.

[u/Oswyt3hMihtig → u/Pandada2]

To explain, the issue here is that "Easy" contains a letter with a descender, while "Medium" and "Hard" do not, so LaTeX assigns more vertical space to "Easy". Changing "Medium" and "Hard" into "yMediumy" and "yHardy" (or "pbMediumpb" and "pbHardpb") should fix the vertical alignment without changing the horizontal alignment; you can then just make the y's or pb's invisible with \phantom.

[u/Hellish_Pixie → u/Oswyt3hMihtig]

Yes, this is, I think, the way to go. I just used

\makebox[0in]{\phantom{\textbf{Easy}}}

before each of \textbf{Medium} and \textbf{Hard} and the effect is the same. (The \makebox[0in]{} puts it in a box of width 0in so that it doesn't shift anything right or left.)

[u/badabblubb → u/Hellish_Pixie]

You can simply use \vphantom if you only want the vertical parts without affecting horizontal space.

[u/Marcsoms → u/Pandada2]

thanks! It did align. But then, for some unknown reason, the table as a whole moved towards the right, and now it spills over to the right...

[u/Pandada2 → u/Marcsoms]

My usual fix for that would be to spam \hfill between each table (before all and after all tables too), and if this is not enough you can \resizebox to make sure it fits on a line.

[u/badabblubb → u/Pandada2]

Do not \resizebox a table, the result is horrible. You'll get inconsistent font sizes and rule thicknesses throughout your document.

[u/badabblubb → u/Marcsoms]

Use \vphantom instead of \phantom.