Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Prompting
What is CoT?
Ask the model to explain its reasoning step-by-step before giving the final answer.
Zero-shot CoT
Simply add: "Let's think step by step."
Surprisingly effective for reasoning tasks!
Few-shot CoT
Provide examples with reasoning:
"Q: If John has 3 apples and gives 1 away, how many left? A: John starts with 3 apples. He gives 1 away. 3 - 1 = 2. John has 2 apples.
Q: [new problem] A: Let me think step by step..."
When CoT Helps
Variations
Self-Consistency: Generate multiple CoT paths, vote on answer Tree-of-Thought: Explore multiple reasoning branches Plan-and-Solve: Plan first, then execute
Reasoning Models
OpenAI o1, DeepSeek R1 have built-in CoT: