Training on the Benchmark Is Not All You Need
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
The success of Large Language Models (LLMs) relies heavily on the huge amount of pre-training data learned in the pre-training phase. The opacity of the pre-training process and the training data causes the results of many benchmark tests to become unreliable. If any model has been trained on a benchmark test set, it can seriously hinder the health of the field. In order to automate and efficiently test the capabilities of large language models, numerous mainstream benchmarks adopt a multiple-choice format. As the swapping of the contents of multiple-choice options does not affect the meaning of the question itself, we propose a simple and effective data leakage detection method based on this property. Specifically, we shuffle the contents of the options in the data to generate the corresponding derived data sets, and then detect data leakage based on the model's log probability distribution over the derived data sets. If there is a maximum and outlier in the set of log probabilities, it indicates that the data is leaked. Our method is able to work under gray-box conditions without access to model training data or weights, effectively identifying data leakage from benchmark test sets in model pre-training data, including both normal scenarios and complex scenarios where options may have been shuffled intentionally or unintentionally. Through experiments based on two LLMs and benchmark designs, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. In addition, we evaluate the degree of data leakage of 35 mainstream open-source LLMs on four benchmark datasets and give a ranking of the leaked LLMs for each benchmark, and we find that the Qwen family of LLMs has the highest degree of data leakage.
Key facts. Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 22 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Sep 2024.
Builds on
19 of 22 references.
References · 19
- 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
- 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 13,958
- 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
- 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
- 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
- 2021Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learnerscited by 3,747
- 2023Qwen Technical Reportcited by 3,273
- 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,044
- 2024Yi: Open Foundation Models by 01.AIcited by 706
- 2023C-Eval: A Multi-Level Multi-Discipline Chinese Evaluation Suite for Foundation Modelscited by 694
- 2023Baichuan 2: Open Large-scale Language Modelscited by 664
- 2023CMMLU: Measuring massive multitask language understanding in Chinesecited by 436
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- 2023Membership Inference Attacks against Language Models via Neighbourhood Comparisoncited by 249
- 2023Proving Test Set Contamination in Black Box Language Modelscited by 227
- 2023Don't Make Your LLM an Evaluation Benchmark Cheatercited by 194
- 2023CMB: A Comprehensive Medical Benchmark in Chinesecited by 113
- 2023Skywork: A More Open Bilingual Foundation Modelcited by 110
- 2024Benchmarking Benchmark Leakage in Large Language Modelscited by 102
- 2024CMMMU: A Chinese Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding Benchmarkcited by 54
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 13; 2026: 9.
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- 2025Time Travel is Cheating: Going Live with DeepFund for Real-Time Fund Investment Benchmarkingcited by 21
- 2026Large Language Model Reasoning Failurescited by 20
- 2025The Emperor's New Clothes in Benchmarking? A Rigorous Examination of Mitigation Strategies for LLM Benchmark Data Contaminationcited by 13
- 2026Evaluating LLMs in Finance Requires Explicit Bias Considerationcited by 11
- 2024ODE: Open-Set Evaluation of Hallucinations in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 8
- 2025Benchmarking LLMs' Mathematical Reasoning with Unseen Random Variables Questionscited by 7
- 2025HoarePrompt: Structural Reasoning About Program Correctness in Natural Languagecited by 7
- 2025Benchmark of stylistic variation in LLM-generated textscited by 7
- 2025Loki's Dance of Illusions: A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination in Large Language Modelscited by 6
- 2024L-CiteEval: Do Long-Context Models Truly Leverage Context for Responding?cited by 5
- 2025Evaluating Differentially Private Generation of Domain-Specific Textcited by 5
- 2025Will LLMs be Professional at Fund Investment? DeepFund: A Live Arena Perspectivecited by 4
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- 2025Unbiased Evaluation of Large Language Models from a Causal Perspectivecited by 3
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- 2025AdEval: Alignment-based Dynamic Evaluation to Mitigate Data Contamination in Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025AnesSuite: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Dataset Suite for Anesthesiology Reasoning in LLMscited by 1
- 2025From Memorization to Generalization: Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Biomedical Term-to-Identifier Normalizationcited by 1
- 2026Quantifying the Effect of Test Set Contamination on Generative Evaluationscited by 1
- 2026Rethinking Automated Program Repair: The Impact of Bug Complexity, Fault Localization, and LLM Cost-efficiencycited by 1
- 2025A Systematic Review on the Generative AI Applications in Human Medical Genomicscited by 0
- 2026Silicon Bureaucracy and AI Test-Oriented Education: Contamination Sensitivity and Score Confidence in LLM Benchmarkscited by 0
- 2026Unsteady Metrics and Benchmarking Cultures of AI Model Builderscited by 0
- 2026How Hard is it to Rig a Benchmark? A Social Choice Analysis of Leaderboard Robustnesscited by 0
- 2026Reciprocal Collaboration: how lessons from convergence in GLAMs can enhance interdisciplinary AI researchcited by 0
- 2026Reciprocal Collaboration: how lessons from convergence in GLAMs can enhance interdisciplinary AI research22 Sep 2026
- 2026Rethinking Automated Program Repair: The Impact of Bug Complexity, Fault Localization, and LLM Cost-efficiency14 Aug 2026
- 2026How Hard is it to Rig a Benchmark? A Social Choice Analysis of Leaderboard Robustness22 May 2026
- 2026LLM Benchmark Datasets Should Be Contamination-Resistant19 May 2026
- 2026Unsteady Metrics and Benchmarking Cultures of AI Model Builders13 May 2026
- 2026Silicon Bureaucracy and AI Test-Oriented Education: Contamination Sensitivity and Score Confidence in LLM Benchmarks23 Mar 2026
- 2026Evaluating LLMs in Finance Requires Explicit Bias Consideration15 Feb 2026
- 2026Large Language Model Reasoning Failures5 Feb 2026
- 2026Quantifying the Effect of Test Set Contamination on Generative Evaluations7 Jan 2026
- 2025From Memorization to Generalization: Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Biomedical Term-to-Identifier Normalization21 Oct 2025
- 2025Benchmark of stylistic variation in LLM-generated texts12 Sep 2025
- 2025Evaluating Differentially Private Generation of Domain-Specific Text28 Aug 2025
12 more
- 2025A Systematic Review on the Generative AI Applications in Human Medical Genomics27 Aug 2025
- 2025Loki's Dance of Illusions: A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination in Large Language Models6 Jun 2025
- 2025Time Travel is Cheating: Going Live with DeepFund for Real-Time Fund Investment Benchmarking16 May 2025
- 2025AnesSuite: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Dataset Suite for Anesthesiology Reasoning in LLMs3 Apr 2025
- 2025HoarePrompt: Structural Reasoning About Program Correctness in Natural Language25 Mar 2025
- 2025Will LLMs be Professional at Fund Investment? DeepFund: A Live Arena Perspective24 Mar 2025
- 2025The Emperor's New Clothes in Benchmarking? A Rigorous Examination of Mitigation Strategies for LLM Benchmark Data Contamination20 Mar 2025
- 2025Unbiased Evaluation of Large Language Models from a Causal Perspective10 Feb 2025
- 2025AdEval: Alignment-based Dynamic Evaluation to Mitigate Data Contamination in Large Language Models23 Jan 2025
- 2025Benchmarking LLMs' Mathematical Reasoning with Unseen Random Variables Questions20 Jan 2025
- 2024L-CiteEval: Do Long-Context Models Truly Leverage Context for Responding?3 Oct 2024
- 2024ODE: Open-Set Evaluation of Hallucinations in Multimodal Large Language Models14 Sep 2024
- 2026Large Language Model Reasoning Failurescited by 20
- 2025Benchmarking LLMs' Mathematical Reasoning with Unseen Random Variables Questionscited by 7
- 2025HoarePrompt: Structural Reasoning About Program Correctness in Natural Languagecited by 7
- 2025AnesSuite: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Dataset Suite for Anesthesiology Reasoning in LLMscited by 1
- 2026Large Language Model Reasoning Failures5 Feb 2026
- 2025AnesSuite: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Dataset Suite for Anesthesiology Reasoning in LLMs3 Apr 2025
- 2025HoarePrompt: Structural Reasoning About Program Correctness in Natural Language25 Mar 2025
- 2025Benchmarking LLMs' Mathematical Reasoning with Unseen Random Variables Questions20 Jan 2025
- 2025Time Travel is Cheating: Going Live with DeepFund for Real-Time Fund Investment Benchmarkingcited by 21
- 2025The Emperor's New Clothes in Benchmarking? A Rigorous Examination of Mitigation Strategies for LLM Benchmark Data Contaminationcited by 13
- 2026Evaluating LLMs in Finance Requires Explicit Bias Considerationcited by 11
- 2025Benchmark of stylistic variation in LLM-generated textscited by 7
- 2025Loki's Dance of Illusions: A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination in Large Language Modelscited by 6
- 2024L-CiteEval: Do Long-Context Models Truly Leverage Context for Responding?cited by 5
- 2025Evaluating Differentially Private Generation of Domain-Specific Textcited by 5
- 2025Will LLMs be Professional at Fund Investment? DeepFund: A Live Arena Perspectivecited by 4
- 2025Unbiased Evaluation of Large Language Models from a Causal Perspectivecited by 3
- 2026LLM Benchmark Datasets Should Be Contamination-Resistantcited by 2
- 2025AdEval: Alignment-based Dynamic Evaluation to Mitigate Data Contamination in Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025From Memorization to Generalization: Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Biomedical Term-to-Identifier Normalizationcited by 1
12 most cited of 19 All 19 (JSON)
- 2026Reciprocal Collaboration: how lessons from convergence in GLAMs can enhance interdisciplinary AI research22 Sep 2026
- 2026Rethinking Automated Program Repair: The Impact of Bug Complexity, Fault Localization, and LLM Cost-efficiency14 Aug 2026
- 2026How Hard is it to Rig a Benchmark? A Social Choice Analysis of Leaderboard Robustness22 May 2026
- 2026LLM Benchmark Datasets Should Be Contamination-Resistant19 May 2026
- 2026Unsteady Metrics and Benchmarking Cultures of AI Model Builders13 May 2026
- 2026Silicon Bureaucracy and AI Test-Oriented Education: Contamination Sensitivity and Score Confidence in LLM Benchmarks23 Mar 2026
- 2026Evaluating LLMs in Finance Requires Explicit Bias Consideration15 Feb 2026
- 2026Quantifying the Effect of Test Set Contamination on Generative Evaluations7 Jan 2026
- 2025From Memorization to Generalization: Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Biomedical Term-to-Identifier Normalization21 Oct 2025
- 2025Benchmark of stylistic variation in LLM-generated texts12 Sep 2025
- 2025Evaluating Differentially Private Generation of Domain-Specific Text28 Aug 2025
- 2025A Systematic Review on the Generative AI Applications in Human Medical Genomics27 Aug 2025
12 newest of 19 All 19 (JSON)