Hypothesis Testing Prompting Improves Deductive Reasoning in Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Li, Yitian, Tian, Jidong, He, Hao, Jin, Yaohui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910442662658048
author Li, Yitian
Tian, Jidong
He, Hao
Jin, Yaohui
author_facet Li, Yitian
Tian, Jidong
He, Hao
Jin, Yaohui
contents Combining different forms of prompts with pre-trained large language models has yielded remarkable results on reasoning tasks (e.g. Chain-of-Thought prompting). However, along with testing on more complex reasoning, these methods also expose problems such as invalid reasoning and fictional reasoning paths. In this paper, we develop \textit{Hypothesis Testing Prompting}, which adds conclusion assumptions, backward reasoning, and fact verification during intermediate reasoning steps. \textit{Hypothesis Testing prompting} involves multiple assumptions and reverses validation of conclusions leading to its unique correct answer. Experiments on two challenging deductive reasoning datasets ProofWriter and RuleTaker show that hypothesis testing prompting not only significantly improves the effect, but also generates a more reasonable and standardized reasoning process.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_06707
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hypothesis Testing Prompting Improves Deductive Reasoning in Large Language Models
Li, Yitian
Tian, Jidong
He, Hao
Jin, Yaohui
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Combining different forms of prompts with pre-trained large language models has yielded remarkable results on reasoning tasks (e.g. Chain-of-Thought prompting). However, along with testing on more complex reasoning, these methods also expose problems such as invalid reasoning and fictional reasoning paths. In this paper, we develop \textit{Hypothesis Testing Prompting}, which adds conclusion assumptions, backward reasoning, and fact verification during intermediate reasoning steps. \textit{Hypothesis Testing prompting} involves multiple assumptions and reverses validation of conclusions leading to its unique correct answer. Experiments on two challenging deductive reasoning datasets ProofWriter and RuleTaker show that hypothesis testing prompting not only significantly improves the effect, but also generates a more reasonable and standardized reasoning process.
title Hypothesis Testing Prompting Improves Deductive Reasoning in Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06707