MetaLadder: Ascending Mathematical Solution Quality via Analogical-Problem Reasoning Transfer

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lin, Honglin, Pan, Zhuoshi, Li, Yu, Pei, Qizhi, Gao, Xin, Cai, Mengzhang, He, Conghui, Wu, Lijun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lin, Honglin
Pan, Zhuoshi
Li, Yu
Pei, Qizhi
Gao, Xin
Cai, Mengzhang
He, Conghui
Wu, Lijun
author_facet Lin, Honglin
Pan, Zhuoshi
Li, Yu
Pei, Qizhi
Gao, Xin
Cai, Mengzhang
He, Conghui
Wu, Lijun
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated promising capabilities in solving mathematical reasoning tasks, leveraging Chain-of-Thought (CoT) data as a vital component in guiding answer generation. Current paradigms typically generate CoT and answers directly for a given problem, diverging from human problem-solving strategies to some extent. Humans often solve problems by recalling analogous cases and leveraging their solutions to reason about the current task. Inspired by this cognitive process, we propose \textbf{MetaLadder}, a novel framework that explicitly prompts LLMs to recall and reflect on meta-problems, those structurally or semantically analogous problems, alongside their CoT solutions before addressing the target problem. Additionally, we introduce a problem-restating mechanism to enhance the model's comprehension of the target problem by regenerating the original question, which further improves reasoning accuracy. Therefore, the model can achieve reasoning transfer from analogical problems, mimicking human-like "learning from examples" and generalization abilities. Extensive experiments on mathematical benchmarks demonstrate that our MetaLadder significantly boosts LLMs' problem-solving accuracy, largely outperforming standard CoT-based methods (\textbf{10.3\%} accuracy gain) and other methods. Our code and data has been released at https://github.com/LHL3341/MetaLadder.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_14891
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MetaLadder: Ascending Mathematical Solution Quality via Analogical-Problem Reasoning Transfer
Lin, Honglin
Pan, Zhuoshi
Li, Yu
Pei, Qizhi
Gao, Xin
Cai, Mengzhang
He, Conghui
Wu, Lijun
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated promising capabilities in solving mathematical reasoning tasks, leveraging Chain-of-Thought (CoT) data as a vital component in guiding answer generation. Current paradigms typically generate CoT and answers directly for a given problem, diverging from human problem-solving strategies to some extent. Humans often solve problems by recalling analogous cases and leveraging their solutions to reason about the current task. Inspired by this cognitive process, we propose \textbf{MetaLadder}, a novel framework that explicitly prompts LLMs to recall and reflect on meta-problems, those structurally or semantically analogous problems, alongside their CoT solutions before addressing the target problem. Additionally, we introduce a problem-restating mechanism to enhance the model's comprehension of the target problem by regenerating the original question, which further improves reasoning accuracy. Therefore, the model can achieve reasoning transfer from analogical problems, mimicking human-like "learning from examples" and generalization abilities. Extensive experiments on mathematical benchmarks demonstrate that our MetaLadder significantly boosts LLMs' problem-solving accuracy, largely outperforming standard CoT-based methods (\textbf{10.3\%} accuracy gain) and other methods. Our code and data has been released at https://github.com/LHL3341/MetaLadder.
title MetaLadder: Ascending Mathematical Solution Quality via Analogical-Problem Reasoning Transfer
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14891