mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Reinforcement Learning is all You Need

arXiv 2503.09512 ↗First posted 12 Mar 2025cs.LG cs.CLcited by 0

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Inspired by the success of DeepSeek R1 in reasoning via reinforcement learning without human feedback, we train a 3B language model using the Countdown Game with pure reinforcement learning. Our model outperforms baselines on four of five benchmarks, demonstrating improved generalization beyond its training data. Notably, response length does not correlate with reasoning quality, and while "aha moments" emerge, they do not always yield correct answers. These findings highlight the potential of RL-only training for reasoning enhancement and suggest future work on refining reward structures to bridge emergent insights with accuracy.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 13 of its 25 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2025.

Builds on

13 of 25 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning22 Jan
  2. 2025The Lessons of Developing Process Reward Models in Mathematical Reasoning13 Jan
  3. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model29 May
  4. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms20 Jul

Other references · 9

  1. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  2. 2020Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understandingcited by 7,963
  3. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
  4. 2017Deep reinforcement learning from human preferencescited by 3,912
  5. 2022Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language modelscited by 1,998
  6. 2022Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Themcited by 1,807
  7. 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,228
  8. 2023Alphazero-like Tree-Search can Guide Large Language Model Decoding and Trainingcited by 295
  9. 2024Interpretable Contrastive Monte Carlo Tree Search Reasoningcited by 64

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  1. 2025On the Interplay of Pre-Training, Mid-Training, and RL on Reasoning Language Models
  2. 2025Logic-RL: Unleashing LLM Reasoning with Rule-Based Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2026DARL: Encouraging Diverse Answers for General Reasoning without Verifiers
  4. 2025Reinforcement Learning Meets Large Language Models: A Survey of Advancements and Applications Across the LLM Lifecycle
  5. 2025Scaling Up RL: Unlocking Diverse Reasoning in LLMs via Prolonged Training
  6. 2025A Survey of Reinforcement Learning for Large Reasoning Models
  7. 2025Reasoning Under 1 Billion: Memory-Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Large Language Models
  8. 2025Reshaping Reasoning in LLMs: A Theoretical Analysis of RL Training Dynamics through Pattern Selection