# ComSearch: Equation Searching with Combinatorial Strategy for Solving Math Word Problems with Weak Supervision

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07017 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07017/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Solving General Arithmetic Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.01413/) (2016)
- [Yara Parser: A Fast and Accurate Dependency Parser](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.06733/) (2015)
- [Generate & Rank: A Multi-task Framework for Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03034/) (2021)
- [Translating a Math Word Problem to an Expression Tree](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.05632/) (2018)
- [From Language to Programs: Bridging Reinforcement Learning and Maximum Marginal Likelihood](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07926/) (2017)
- [MWPToolkit: An Open-Source Framework for Deep Learning-Based Math Word Problem Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00799/) (2021)
- [Mapping to Declarative Knowledge for Word Problem Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.09391/) (2017)
- [The Gap of Semantic Parsing: A Survey on Automatic Math Word Problem Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.07290/) (2018)
- [Unit Dependency Graph and its Application to Arithmetic Word Problem Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00969/) (2016)
- [Learning by Fixing: Solving Math Word Problems with Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10582/) (2020)
- [Investigating Math Word Problems using Pretrained Multilingual Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.08928/) (2021)
- [Reverse Operation based Data Augmentation for Solving Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01556/) (2020)
- [Weakly-supervised Semantic Parsing with Abstract Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05240/) (2017)
- [Text2Math: End-to-end Parsing Text into Math Expressions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06571/) (2019)
- [Inferring Logical Forms From Denotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06900/) (2016)
- [Seeking Diverse Reasoning Logic: Controlled Equation Expression Generation for Solving Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10310/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [From Large to Tiny: Distilling and Refining Mathematical Expertise for Math Word Problems with Weakly Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14390/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Previous studies have introduced a weakly-supervised paradigm for solving math word problems requiring only the answer value annotation. While these methods search for correct value equation candidates as pseudo labels, they search among a narrow sub-space of the enormous equation space. To address this problem, we propose a novel search algorithm with combinatorial strategy ComSearch, which can compress the search space by excluding mathematically equivalent equations. The compression allows the searching algorithm to enumerate all possible equations and obtain high-quality data. We investigate the noise in the pseudo labels that hold wrong mathematical logic, which we refer to as the textitfalse-matching problem, and propose a ranking model to denoise the pseudo labels. Our approach holds a flexible framework to utilize two existing supervised math word problem solvers to train pseudo labels, and both achieve state-of-the-art performance in the weak supervision task.