RL-STaR: Theoretical Analysis of Reinforcement Learning Frameworks for Self-Taught Reasoner

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23912v2
• Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:52:09 GMT
• Title: RL-STaR: Theoretical Analysis of Reinforcement Learning Frameworks for Self-Taught Reasoner
• Authors: Fu-Chieh Chang, Yu-Ting Lee, Hui-Ying Shih, Yi Hsuan Tseng, Pei-Yuan Wu,
• Abstract summary: Self-taught reasoner (STaR) uses reinforcement learning to automatically generate reasoning steps.<n> STaR and its variants have demonstrated empirical success, but a theoretical foundation explaining these improvements is lacking.<n>This work provides a theoretical framework for understanding the effectiveness of reinforcement learning on CoT reasoning and STaR.
• Score: 2.5903660653548366
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The reasoning abilities of large language models (LLMs) have improved with chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting, allowing models to solve complex tasks stepwise. However, training CoT capabilities requires detailed reasoning data, which is often scarce. The self-taught reasoner (STaR) framework addresses this by using reinforcement learning to automatically generate reasoning steps, reducing reliance on human-labeled data. Although STaR and its variants have demonstrated empirical success, a theoretical foundation explaining these improvements is lacking. This work provides a theoretical framework for understanding the effectiveness of reinforcement learning on CoT reasoning and STaR. Our contributions are: (1) criteria for the quality of pre-trained models necessary to initiate effective reasoning improvement; (2) an analysis of policy improvement, showing why LLM reasoning improves iteratively with STaR; (3) conditions for convergence to an optimal reasoning policy; and (4) an examination of STaR's robustness, explaining how it can improve reasoning even when incorporating occasional incorrect steps; This framework aims to bridge empirical findings with theoretical insights, advancing reinforcement learning approaches for reasoning in LLMs.

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