Math Reasoning in LLMs is Organized by Approach, Not Topic

The paper argues that large language models (LLMs) organize their internal mathematical reasoning by reusable reasoning approaches rather than by the benchmark topics they are tested on. Using a generation‑replay protocol, the authors extract activation‑importance signatures from eight models across five math sources, cluster these signatures, and find that the resulting groups align more closely with reasoning approaches than with topics. The study shows that changing the requested reasoning approach shifts cluster assignments, while paraphrasing the prompt does not, underscoring the primacy of approach over topic in LLM reasoning.

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• llms
• benchmarks