A method for discovering relationships in tabular data is provided in the illustrative embodiments. A set of documents is received, a document in the set including the tabular data. A cell in the tabular data is selected whose dependencies are to be determined. A hypothesis to use in conjunction with the cell is selected. Whether the hypothesis applies to a selected portion of the document is tested by determining whether a conclusion in the hypothesis can be computed using a function specified in the hypothesis on the selected portion. The selected portion can be a selected cell-range in the tabular data or content in a non-tabular portion of the document. The hypothesis is utilized to describe the cell relative to the selected portion.