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The Potential of CoT for Reasoning: A Closer Look at Trace Dynamics

Cui Cui Follow Feb 26, 2026 · 1 min read
The Potential of CoT for Reasoning: A Closer Look at Trace Dynamics

Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting is a de-facto standard technique to elicit reasoning-like responses from large language models (LLMs), allowing them to spell out individual steps before giving a fina…

Executive Summary

Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting is a de-facto standard technique to elicit reasoning-like responses from large language models (LLMs), allowing them to spell out individual steps before giving a final answer. While the resemblance to human-like reasoning is undeniable, the driving forces underpinning the success of CoT reasoning still remain largely unclear. In this work, we perform an in-depth analysis of CoT traces originating from competition-level mathematics questions, with the aim of better understanding how, and which parts of CoT actually contribute to the final answer. To this end…

Key Insights

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Technical Deep Dive

Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting is a de-facto standard technique to elicit reasoning-like responses from large language models (LLMs), allowing them to spell out individual steps before giving a final answer. While the resemblance to human-like reasoning is undeniable, the driving forces underpinning the success of CoT reasoning still remain largely unclear. In this work, we perform an in-depth analysis of CoT traces originating from competition-level mathematics questions, with the aim of better understanding how, and which parts of CoT actually contribute to the final answer. To this end…

Why This Matters

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This post was automatically curated from RSS. Published on 2026-02-26T17:02:18.796Z.

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