arXiv Machine Learning

Complex Problem Solving in Large Language Models: A Statistical Control Survey and Diagnostic Framework

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 24

Exact Feedback Is Not Control: Evaluating Text-based Closed-Loop Revision in LLMs

The paper introduces a fixed‑budget revision protocol that uses deterministic verifiers to expose all remaining violations across exact‑length, lexical, and compositional constraints, thereby isolating model‑side revision behavior. Experiments on 19 open‑ and closed‑source LLMs show wide variability in controller‑level success, with some models achieving up to 99.8% success while others remain below 20%. Controlled studies reveal that post‑training and scale affect model responses to exact feedback, but do not consistently improve exact correction, and that recurrence of earlier outputs is linked to lower recoverability.

By Haitong Jiang, Chunlin Liu, Yile Wang, Yuhong Feng
arXiv AI
Sep 4

It's the Problem, Not the Path: Budget and Difficulty Confounds in LLM Reasoning Trajectories

The paper investigates whether large language models’ reasoning traces truly contain early, informative signals or merely reflect budget and difficulty confounds. Using a restart‑controlled truncation probe, the authors compare continuation success rates against from‑scratch restart curves across 178 problem‑model pairs, finding that only one case shows prefix‑limited success and that continuing a model’s own prefix generally outperforms restarting. A difficulty‑controlled test and two generation‑free analyses reveal that early internal signals do not carry outcome information beyond a problem‑difficulty baseline, underscoring the need for proper counterfactual controls.

By Yigit Utku Bulut
arXiv AI
Sep 18

Diagnose, Recover, Certify: Task Readiness under Hidden Dynamics Changes

The paper introduces a framework for diagnosing and recovering from hidden dynamics changes in deployed control policies, focusing on the problem of task readiness under dormant dynamics drift. It proposes an intervention-based Bayesian method called Evidence‑Gated Matched‑Pulse Transport that localizes faults and estimates actuator effectiveness, enabling agents to certify readiness for future tasks with limited, task‑agnostic interactions. The approach is evaluated on diverse benchmarks, measuring readiness coverage, selective risk, interaction cost, and return, and identifies regimes where transported evidence is decisive.

By Nguyen Viet Tuan Kiet, Huynh Thi Thanh Binh
arXiv AI
Aug 12

UPAIR: Diagnosing Reasoning States via Uncertainty-Progress Alignment for Selective Intervention

arXiv:2607. 17188v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: While test-time scaling improves the problem-solving ability of large reasoning models (LRMs) through additional inference-time computation, it can also exacerbate overthinking and underthinking, which we formulate as reasoning state--action mismatch.

By Cheng Yan, Zhijun Fan, Guangyang Ye, Fan Xu, Xiang Xia, Yawei Wang, Wuyang Zhang