arXiv:2609.31688v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: In verifiable domains such as math and coding, finding one correct solution among many attempts can matter more than the pass rate of each attempt....
By Eric Fithian, Kirill Skobelev, X. Y. Han
arXiv:2609.25575v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Fine-tuned Large Language Models (LLMs) significantly advance Automated Theorem Proving (ATP), but are often deployed as guiding policies within tree...
By Adam Ousherovitch, Ambuj Tewari
The paper investigates how increasing inference-time computation—via wider beam search or sample‑plus‑vote—affects performance on grammar‑constrained text‑to‑SQL tasks for small language models. Using the Qwen2.5‑Instruct family (0.5B–7B parameters) on the Spider benchmark, the authors find that larger models consistently outperform higher inference compute on the same model size, and that beam search yields better accuracy than sample‑plus‑vote under matched budgets. These results suggest that, unlike unconstrained settings, scaling inference compute does not compensate for smaller model size when strict grammar constraints are applied.
By Ty Chermsirivatana, John MacCormick
arXiv:2609.38672v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Beam-search-based test-time methods provide an effective way to improve large language model (LLM) performance on long-horizon generation by pruning...
By Qijia He, Yu Huang, Yuan Cheng, Yuxin Chen, Yingbin Liang
ESPO (Error-Structured Prompt Optimization) addresses prompt bloat in evolutionary prompt optimizers by separating optimization into Diagnose, Propose, and Select phases. It clusters training errors, generates diverse candidates, and applies bootstrap stability selection, achieving a 3.76‑point accuracy gain over GEPA on seven NLP benchmarks while producing 47% shorter prompts. Cross‑model tests on four additional student models confirm ESPO’s superior average accuracy, notably improving Qwen3 GSM8K from 15.00% to 91.40%.
ESPO (Error-Structured Prompt Optimization) addresses prompt bloat in evolutionary prompt optimizers by splitting the optimization process into Diagnose, Propose, and Select phases. It clusters training errors into structural patterns, generates diverse candidate prompts through four complementary strategies, and applies bootstrap stability selection. Across seven NLP benchmarks, ESPO improves average accuracy by +3.76 pp over GEPA, produces prompts 47 % shorter, and achieves higher accuracy on four additional student models, with the largest gain on Qwen3 GSM8K.
By Lihao Liu, Peng Tang, Kunwar Yashraj Singh, Shabnam Ghadar
The paper investigates whether semantic entropy—a measure of disagreement among a language model’s sampled answers—can serve as a cheap signal for deciding when to route a query from a small to a larger language model. Experiments on GSM8K and other benchmarks show that semantic entropy can distinguish small‑model mistakes and improve routed accuracy, but the authors also reveal that a simple question‑difficulty rule can mimic its performance and that other factors (definition of success, benchmark design, live sampling cost) can undermine its effectiveness. They propose a checklist of checks to validate escalation signals and demonstrate how to predict when a cached‑outcome approach will fail.
"whyItMatters":"The study highlights the importance of rigorous evaluation of escalation signals, showing that seemingly promising metrics can be misleading without proper controls and that practical routing decisions must account for cost and benchmark design."
By Ramin Pishehvar, Andrea Morandi, Mahesh Viswanathan
arXiv:2608. 12426v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models are increasingly deployed in settings that require simultaneous adherence to multiple explicit constraints - reasoning structure, safety boundaries, output schemas.
By Mariya I. Vasileva
arXiv:2609.35793v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly trained with reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards (RLVR). An exact verifier can also support te...
By Xuan Liu, Jingbin Qian, Haosheng Chen
arXiv:2608. 05212v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deep search agents tackle challenging questions through long-horizon web interactions, a process that is both complex and fragile: small reasoning errors may propagate through long, noisy trajectories into fluent but incorrect answers.
By Zhixiang Liang, Yifei Liu, Yidan Huang, Haozhe Zhao, Beichen Huang, Jiaqi Wang, Nan Duan, Qiong Cao
The paper introduces Dynamic Boundary Evaluation (DBE), a method that moves beyond static benchmarks by locating the per‑prompt pass probability near 0.5 for large language models. DBE provides a calibrated item bank with difficulty labels, a Skill‑Guided Boundary Search algorithm that works with API‑level access, and an adaptive evaluation protocol that places new models on a unified ability scale. The approach is applied to safety, capability, and truthfulness tasks, expanding coverage without saturation and remaining compatible with existing datasets.
By Haoxiang Wang, Da Yu, Huishuai Zhang
The paper introduces Trimmed Logit-Gap SFT (TrimSFT), a token-level reweighting strategy that adjusts supervised fine-tuning loss based on the logit gap between the correct token and its strongest competitor. TrimSFT trims supervision from tokens that are either already mastered (large logit gap) or poorly supported (small or negative logit gap), focusing learning on tokens with intermediate logit gaps. Experiments on six base models across five mathematical reasoning benchmarks show that TrimSFT consistently outperforms standard SFT, achieving the best average performance on five of six models and up to +26.9 points on MATH500.
By Yaning Jia, Chunhui Zhang, Wenxuan Xu, Xingjian Diao, Xiaoyuan Wang, Soroush Vosoughi