# Automatic Model Selection with Large Language Models for Reasoning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.14333 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14333/

## Key facts

- Cited by 35 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 30 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2023.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 30)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12712/) (2023)
- [Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04615/) (2022)
- [Language Models (Mostly) Know What They Know](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05221/) (2022)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [Calibrate Before Use: Improving Few-Shot Performance of Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09690/) (2021)
- [Program of Thoughts Prompting: Disentangling Computation from Reasoning for Numerical Reasoning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12588/) (2022)
- [Solving math word problems with process- and outcome-based feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14275/) (2022)
- [Are NLP Models really able to Solve Simple Math Word Problems?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07191/) (2021)
- [PAL: Program-aided Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10435/) (2022)
- [How Can We Know When Language Models Know? On the Calibration of Language Models for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00955/) (2020)
- [Complexity-Based Prompting for Multi-Step Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00720/) (2022)
- [Selection-Inference: Exploiting Large Language Models for Interpretable Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09712/) (2022)
- [A Diverse Corpus for Evaluating and Developing English Math Word Problem Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15772/) (2021)
- [REFINER: Reasoning Feedback on Intermediate Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01904/) (2023)
- [Progressive-Hint Prompting Improves Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09797/) (2023)
- [Rationale-Augmented Ensembles in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00747/) (2022)
- [LAMBADA: Backward Chaining for Automated Reasoning in Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13894/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03714/) (2023)
- [WizardMath: Empowering Mathematical Reasoning for Large Language Models via Reinforced Evol-Instruct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09583/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models for Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10620/) (2023)
- [Solving Challenging Math Word Problems Using GPT-4 Code Interpreter with Code-based Self-Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07921/) (2023)
- [MathCoder: Seamless Code Integration in LLMs for Enhanced Mathematical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03731/) (2023)
- [Large Language Model Cascades with Mixture of Thoughts Representations for Cost-efficient Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03094/) (2023)
- [Let's reward step by step: Step-Level reward model as the Navigators for Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10080/) (2023)
- [Metacognitive Capabilities of LLMs: An Exploration in Mathematical Problem Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12205/) (2024)
- [Self-Contrast: Better Reflection Through Inconsistent Solving Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02009/) (2024)
- [Corex: Pushing the Boundaries of Complex Reasoning through Multi-Model Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00280/) (2023)
- [TinyGSM: achieving >80% on GSM8k with small language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09241/) (2023)
- [GeoGPT4V: Towards Geometric Multi-modal Large Language Models with Geometric Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11503/) (2024)
- [Plan, Verify and Switch: Integrated Reasoning with Diverse X-of-Thoughts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14628/) (2023)
- [Boosting of Thoughts: Trial-and-Error Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11140/) (2024)
- [DOTS: Learning to Reason Dynamically in LLMs via Optimal Reasoning Trajectories Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03864/) (2024)
- [Multi-expert Prompting Improves Reliability, Safety, and Usefulness of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00492/) (2024)
- [Fine-Tuning on Diverse Reasoning Chains Drives Within-Inference CoT Refinement in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03181/) (2024)
- [Toward Adaptive Reasoning in Large Language Models with Thought Rollback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19707/) (2024)
- [Foundation Models for Education: Promises and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10959/) (2024)
- [YUAN 2.0: A Large Language Model with Localized Filtering-based Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15786/) (2023)
- [Reinforcement Learning from Reflective Feedback (RLRF): Aligning and Improving LLMs via Fine-Grained Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14238/) (2024)
- [Towards Building Specialized Generalist AI with System 1 and System 2 Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08642/) (2024)
- [Challenges Faced by Large Language Models in Solving Multi-Agent Flocking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04752/) (2024)
- [FT-MDT: Extracting Decision Trees from Medical Texts via a Novel Low-rank Adaptation Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04655/) (2025)
- [Towards Robust Multi-Modal Reasoning via Model Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08446/) (2023)
- [Text2MDT: Extracting Medical Decision Trees from Medical Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02034/) (2024)
- [Improving Arithmetic Reasoning Ability of Large Language Models through Relation Tuples, Verification and Dynamic Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17873/) (2024)
- [Teaching-Inspired Integrated Prompting Framework: A Novel Approach for Enhancing Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08068/) (2024)
- [Self-Consistency from Only Two Samples: CoT-PoT Ensembling for Efficient LLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17433/) (2026)
- [Selection of Prompt Engineering Techniques for Code Generation through Predicting Code Complexity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16416/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) and Program-Aided Language Models (PAL) represent two distinct reasoning methods, each with its own strengths. CoT employs natural language, offering flexibility and interpretability, while PAL utilizes programming language, yielding more structured and rigorous logic. We introduce a model selection method to combine the best of both worlds by employing a large language model (LLM) to dynamically select between them. Our theoretical analysis underscores the feasibility of this method, which is further corroborated by empirical results. Our proposed method demonstrates significant performance improvements across eight reasoning datasets with Codex, ChatGPT, and GPT-4. Additionally, our method is complementary to self-consistency; when integrated, it can further enhance performance while significantly reducing computation costs. Moreover, we achieve new state-of-the-art results on GSM8K and SVAMP, with respective accuracies of 96.8% and 93.7%. Our code, data and prompts are available at https://github.com/XuZhao0/Model-Selection-Reasoning