The paper investigates why Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) benefits from per‑prompt normalization by examining the local curvature of the sequence‑level policy gradient. It shows that standard deviation normalization acts as an adaptive gradient, yielding a provably faster convergence rate than unnormalized REINFORCE under mild conditions, with the improvement tied to the average within‑prompt reward standard deviation. The authors also propose IS‑GRPO, an importance‑sampling variant that maintains alignment with the full gradient and offers a tighter convergence guarantee, and empirically validate these theoretical insights on GSM8K and MATH datasets at 1.5B and 7B model scales.
By Cheng Ge, Caitlyn Heqi Yin, Hao Liang, Jiawei Zhang
arXiv:2607. 04470v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a natural interface for translating human objectives into reward signals for cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), yet the training-time dynamics of this integration remain poorly understood.
By Faid Keddouri, Sohaib Houhou, Aissa Boulmerka, Nadir Farhi
arXiv:2609.36945v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the learning dynamics of fine-tuning a policy model on self-generated and reward-weighted data, with particular focus on a generalized version...
By Zhiwei Wang, Yanxi Chen, Yaliang Li, Bolin Ding
arXiv:2607. 23364v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is the dominant reinforcement learning algorithm for training reasoning capabilities in large language models, notably adopted by DeepSeek-R1.
By Fei Ding, Yongkang Zhang, Yuhao Liao, Zijian Zeng, Huiming Yang
arXiv:2607. 12640v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards, and Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) in particular, is now run routinely on a supervised checkpoint in the hope of producing a stronger agent.
By Chengguang Gan, Zhixi Cai, Yunhao Liang, Hanjun Wei, Shiwen Ni, Qinghao Zhang
Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is the dominant reinforcement learning algorithm for training reasoning capabilities in large language models, notably adopted by DeepSeek-R1. The recent improvement Dr.