Chain-of-Thought Prompting

Entity Type: Glossary ID: chain-of-thought-prompting

Definition: A prompting technique that encourages language models to generate step-by-step reasoning processes before arriving at final answers. By explicitly showing intermediate reasoning steps in examples or requesting the model to 'think step by step,' this method significantly improves performance on complex reasoning tasks including arithmetic, logical reasoning, and multi-step problem solving. The technique leverages the model's ability to break down complex problems into manageable components.

Related Terms: - prompt-engineering - reasoning - few-shot-learning - step-by-step-reasoning - problem-decomposition

Source Urls: - https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 - https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.11916 - https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques/cot

Tags: - reasoning - prompt-engineering - problem-solving - emergent-abilities

Status: active

Version: 1.0.0

Created At: 2025-09-10

Last Updated: 2025-09-10