SHAPE of Chain-of-Thought in Math Reasoning

Abstract

arXiv:2608.28600v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) achieve strong performance on mathematical reasoning benchmarks, yet the mathematically meaningful skills underlying their reasoning remain underexplored. We introduce \texttt{SHAPE}, a framework that analyzes Chain-of-Thought (CoT) trajectories through two lenses developed in mathematics education: (1) semantic spaces: the model's evolving mathematical interpretations of a problem (e.g., algebraic, geometric), and (2)