Word of the Day
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Chain-of-thought prompting asks the model to reason step by step before answering, improving accuracy on multi-step problems.
Get it freeChain-of-thought (CoT) prompting instructs the model to work through a problem in intermediate steps before giving a final answer. On math, logic, and multi-step analysis, laying out the reasoning first meaningfully reduces errors versus jumping straight to an answer.
The classic trigger is a phrase like 'Let's think step by step,' but the stronger version specifies the steps you want: 'First list the assumptions, then compute each figure, then state the conclusion.' Some newer 'reasoning' models do this internally, but explicit CoT still helps for auditability — you can see and check the work.
Related: self consistency · prompt chaining · few shot prompting · hallucination
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