arXiv Machine Learning

Learning to Reason with Curriculum II: Compositional Generalization

arXiv:2606. 27721v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Compositional generalization, the ability to solve complex problems by combining solutions to simpler sub-problems, is a fundamental capability of both natural and artificial intelligence, and a key mechanism underlying chain-of-thought reasoning.

arXiv AI
Aug 11

How Much Backtracking is Enough? Exploring the Interplay of SFT and RL in Enhancing LLM Reasoning

arXiv:2505. 24273v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) suggest that reinforcement learning (RL) effectively internalizes search strategies, yielding significant improvements on challenging reasoning tasks through extended chains of thought.

By Hongyi James Cai, Junlin Wang, Xiaoyin Chen, Bhuwan Dhingra
arXiv AI
Jun 9

CLPO: Curriculum Learning meets Policy Optimization for LLM Reasoning

arXiv:2509. 25004v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Online reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has become an effective paradigm for improving the reasoning abilities of large language models, but most methods still optimize reasoning trajectories over the static problem set, wasting rollout budget on solved or overly difficult problems.

By Shijie Zhang, Zheng Xiao, Shiyu Liu, Guohao Sun, Kevin Zhang, Xiang Guo, Rujun Guo, Shaoyu Liu, Wangxiao Zhao, Guanjun Jiang
arXiv AI
1d ago

Rethinking Generalization in Reasoning SFT: A Conditional Analysis on Optimization, Data, and Model Capability

arXiv:2604. 06628v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A prevailing narrative in LLM post-training holds that supervised finetuning (SFT) memorizes while reinforcement learning (RL) generalizes.

By Qihan Ren, Peng Wang, Ruikun Cai, Shuai Shao, Dadi Guo, Yuejin Xie, Yafu Li, Quanshi Zhang, Xia Hu, Jing Shao, Dongrui Liu
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Question Begets Question: Self-Evolving Curriculum for Reinforcement Fine-Tuning on Competition Mathematics

arXiv:2608. 01522v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Teaching a language model a skill it has not mastered is obstructed by three recurring difficulties: training data is scarce, ground-truth reasoning traces are usually unavailable, and models often exhibit an apparent ceiling beyond which additional data yields no further improvement.

By Longtian Bao, Jianyou Wang, Yang Zhang, Youze Zheng, Ramamohan Paturi
arXiv AI
Jul 31

Probing the Origins of Reasoning Performance: Representational Quality for Mathematical Problem-Solving in RL vs. SFT Fine-Tuned Models

arXiv:2607. 26119v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large reasoning models trained via reinforcement learning (RL) have been increasingly shown to outperform their supervised fine-tuned (SFT) counterparts on mathematical reasoning tasks; Yet the mechanistic basis for this advantage remains unclear.

By Antyabha Rahman, Akshaj Gurugubelli, Omar Ankit, Kevin Zhu, Aishwarya Balwani
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 9

Attention Illuminates LLM Reasoning: The Preplan-and-Anchor Rhythm Enables Fine-Grained Policy Optimization

arXiv:2510. 13554v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The reasoning pattern of Large language models (LLMs) remains opaque, and reinforcement learning (RL) typically applies uniform credit across an entire generation, blurring the distinction between pivotal and routine steps.

By Yang Li, Zhichen Dong, Yuhan Sun, Weixun Wang, Shaopan Xiong, Yijia Luo, Jiashun Liu, Han Lu, Jiamang Wang, Wenbo Su, Bo Zheng, Junchi Yan