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arXiv · 2505.22650

On Learning Verifiers and Implications to Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

Maria-Florina Balcan·Avrim Blum·Zhiyuan Li·Dravyansh Sharma
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Abstract

Chain-of-Thought reasoning has emerged as a powerful approach for solving complex mathematical and logical problems. However, it can often veer off track through incorrect or unsubstantiated inferences. Formal mathematical reasoning, which can be checked with a formal verifier, is one approach to addressing this issue. However, currently LLMs are simply not good enough to solve complex problems in a formal way, and even just formalizing an informal problem statement can be challenging. Motivated by this fact, in this work we consider the problem of learning reliable verifiers for natural language Chain-of-Thought reasoning. That is, given a problem statement and step-by-step solution in natural language, the aim of the verifier is to output [Yes] if the reasoning steps in the solution are all valid, and [No] otherwise. In this work we give a formal PAC-learning framework for studying this problem. We propose and analyze several natural verification goals, at different levels of strength, in this framework. We provide sample complexity upper-bounds for learning verifiers satisfying these goals, as well as lower-bound and impossibility results for learning other natural verification objectives without additional assumptions.

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Maria-Florina Balcan, Avrim Blum, Zhiyuan Li, Dravyansh Sharma. 2026-02-13. On Learning Verifiers and Implications to Chain-of-Thought Reasoning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22650

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