mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

From Atomic to Agentic: Towards Interpretable Evaluation of LLMs' Agentic Mathematical Capabilities

arXiv 2608.26950 ↗First posted 27 Aug 2026cs.AI cs.CLcited by 0

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are evolving from performing end-to-end mathematical reasoning to integrating agentic intelligence. However, most existing math benchmarks evaluate only final answers. This outcome-oriented evaluation provides limited diagnostic value for identifying process-level failures or rigorous logic, failing to guide the transformation of LLMs into robust agents. To bridge this gap, we present a process-level benchmark designed to evaluate the inherent agentic mathematical reasoning abilities of LLMs. Our framework aligns problem-solving agentic behaviors with a structured taxonomy of reusable mathematical atomic capabilities. We design a comprehensive suite of planning, action, and feedback tasks across both textual and multimodal contexts, supported by an automated pipeline that synthesizes high-quality trajectories and produces fine-grained annotations via controlled LLM rewriting. Experiments reveal that models with similar end-to-end accuracy can exhibit markedly different agentic capability profiles. This demonstrates that process-level evaluation is crucial for interpreting the true potential of LLMs and guiding the development of next-generation mathematical agents.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 50 of its 78 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Aug 2026.

Builds on

50 of 78 references.

References · 50

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  2. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  3. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  4. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
  5. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  6. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  7. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,789
  8. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
  9. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contextscited by 1,614
  10. 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiencycited by 1,510
  11. 2022Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Modelscited by 1,392
  12. 2024OlympiadBench: A Challenging Benchmark for Promoting AGI with Olympiad-Level Bilingual Multimodal Scientific Problemscited by 1,136
38 more
  1. 2024Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvementcited by 1,090
  2. 2023Math-Shepherd: Verify and Reinforce LLMs Step-by-step without Human Annotationscited by 928
  3. 2021Are NLP Models really able to Solve Simple Math Word Problems?cited by 878
  4. 2024DeepSeek-VL2: Mixture-of-Experts Vision-Language Models for Advanced Multimodal Understandingcited by 572
  5. 2024Measuring Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning with MATH-Vision Datasetcited by 526
  6. 2025The Lessons of Developing Process Reward Models in Mathematical Reasoningcited by 415
  7. 2021MiniF2F: a cross-system benchmark for formal Olympiad-level mathematicscited by 391
  8. 2019Analysing Mathematical Reasoning Abilities of Neural Modelscited by 335
  9. 2025MathArena: Evaluating LLMs on Uncontaminated Math Competitionscited by 297
  10. 2024Omni-MATH: A Universal Olympiad Level Mathematic Benchmark For Large Language Modelscited by 284
  11. 2025DeepMath-103K: A Large-Scale, Challenging, Decontaminated, and Verifiable Mathematical Dataset for Advancing Reasoningcited by 280
  12. 2023ProofNet: Autoformalizing and Formally Proving Undergraduate-Level Mathematicscited by 192
  13. 2021NaturalProofs: Mathematical Theorem Proving in Natural Languagecited by 81
  14. 2025Towards Robust Mathematical Reasoningcited by 73
  15. 2023MathChat: Converse to Tackle Challenging Math Problems with LLM Agentscited by 68
  16. 2025A Survey on Large Language Models for Mathematical Reasoningcited by 52
  17. 2023Evaluating and Improving Tool-Augmented Computation-Intensive Math Reasoningcited by 49
  18. 2024Process-Driven Autoformalization in Lean 4cited by 45
  19. 2023LatEval: An Interactive LLMs Evaluation Benchmark with Incomplete Information from Lateral Thinking Puzzlescited by 41
  20. 2025AMO-Bench: Large Language Models Still Struggle in High School Math Competitionscited by 38
  21. 2025MV-MATH: Evaluating Multimodal Math Reasoning in Multi-Visual Contextscited by 32
  22. 2016Annotating Derivations: A New Evaluation Strategy and Dataset for Algebra Word Problemscited by 28
  23. 2023FormalGeo: An Extensible Formalized Framework for Olympiad Geometric Problem Solvingcited by 27
  24. 2025MM-Agent: LLM as Agents for Real-world Mathematical Modeling Problemcited by 25
  25. 2025RECODE-H: A Benchmark for Research Code Development with Interactive Human Feedbackcited by 25
  26. 2025MathAgent: Leveraging a Mixture-of-Math-Agent Framework for Real-World Multimodal Mathematical Error Detectioncited by 24
  27. 2025Process-Level Trajectory Evaluation for Environment Configuration in Software Engineering Agentscited by 18
  28. 2025Refine Knowledge of Large Language Models via Adaptive Contrastive Learningcited by 15
  29. 2024What Are Step-Level Reward Models Rewarding? Counterintuitive Findings from MCTS-Boosted Mathematical Reasoningcited by 14
  30. 2025A Survey on Mathematical Reasoning and Optimization with Large Language Modelscited by 12
  31. 2024ProductAgent: Benchmarking Conversational Product Search Agent with Asking Clarification Questionscited by 10
  32. 2025Large Language Models Have Intrinsic Meta-Cognition, but Need a Good Lenscited by 10
  33. 2026EvoConfig: Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Systems for Efficient Autonomous Environment Configurationcited by 8
  34. 2026Cognitive Mismatch in Multimodal Large Language Models for Discrete Symbol Understandingcited by 7
  35. 2025Atomic Thinking of LLMs: Decoupling and Exploring Mathematical Reasoning Abilitiescited by 6
  36. 2026From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AIcited by 6
  37. 2023Modeling Complex Mathematical Reasoning via Large Language Model based MathAgentcited by 3
  38. 2026TopoAgent: A Self-Evolving Topological Agent for Multimodal Scientific Reasoningcited by 2

Built on by

Not cited yet.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025AgentCoMa: A Compositional Benchmark Mixing Commonsense and Mathematical Reasoning in Real-World Scenarios
  2. 2025A Fragile Number Sense: Probing the Elemental Limits of Numerical Reasoning in LLMs
  3. 2026Evaluating SageMath-Augmented LLM Agents for Computational and Experimental Mathematics
  4. 2025LLM-based Agentic Reasoning Frameworks: A Survey from Methods to Scenarios
  5. 2025Unifying Language Agent Algorithms with Graph-based Orchestration Engine for Reproducible Agent Research
  6. 2026Enhancing Mathematical Problem Solving in LLMs through Execution-Driven Reasoning Augmentation
  7. 2025Distilling LLM Agent into Small Models with Retrieval and Code Tools
  8. 2025Agentic Reasoning and Tool Integration for LLMs via Reinforcement Learning