Mars-PO: Multi-Agent Reasoning System Preference Optimization
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code
also in 2 more
Abstract (arXiv)
Mathematical reasoning is a fundamental capability for large language models (LLMs), yet achieving high performance in this domain remains a significant challenge. The auto-regressive generation process often makes LLMs susceptible to errors, hallucinations, and inconsistencies, particularly during multi-step reasoning. In this paper, we propose Mars-PO, a novel framework to improve the mathematical reasoning capabilities of LLMs through a multi-agent system. It combines high-quality outputs from multiple agents into a hybrid positive sample set and pairs them with agent-specific negative samples to construct robust preference pairs for training. By aligning agents with shared positive samples while addressing individual weaknesses, Mars-PO achieves substantial performance improvements on mathematical reasoning benchmarks. For example, it increases the accuracy on the MATH benchmark of the state-of-the-art instruction-tuned LLM, Llama3.1-8B-Instruct, from 50.38% to 57.82%. Experimental results further demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms other baselines, such as supervised fine-tuning, vanilla DPO, and its enhanced versions, highlighting the effectiveness of our approach.
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 23 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Nov 2024.
Builds on
23 of 28 references.
References · 23
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11 more
- 2023ToRA: A Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent for Mathematical Problem Solvingcited by 276
- 2024Step-DPO: Step-wise Preference Optimization for Long-chain Reasoning of LLMscited by 265
- 2024Iterative Reasoning Preference Optimizationcited by 244
- 2023Solving Challenging Math Word Problems Using GPT-4 Code Interpreter with Code-based Self-Verificationcited by 166
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- 2024Step-Controlled DPO: Leveraging Stepwise Error for Enhanced Mathematical Reasoningcited by 35
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 2.
3 papers.
- 2025LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directionscited by 49
- 2026Artificial Intelligence for Mathematical Reasoning: An Integrated Survey of Language Models, Neuro-symbolic Systems, and Verified Discoverycited by 1
- 2026Learning Sexism Detection Using Multi-Agent Perspectivist Preference Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026Learning Sexism Detection Using Multi-Agent Perspectivist Preference Optimization4 Aug 2026
- 2026Artificial Intelligence for Mathematical Reasoning: An Integrated Survey of Language Models, Neuro-symbolic Systems, and Verified Discovery7 Jun 2026
- 2025LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directions23 Sep 2025
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- 2026Agentic Multi-Turn Reasoning: A Fairness Approach
- 2026Critic-Guided Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reasoning for Reliable Mathematical Problem Solving
- 2026M2A: Synergizing Mathematical and Agentic Reasoning in Large Language Models
- 2024MALT: Improving Reasoning with Multi-Agent LLM Training
- 2025Probability-Consistent Preference Optimization for Enhanced LLM Reasoning
- 2024Building Math Agents with Multi-Turn Iterative Preference Learning