AI Glossary
What is chain-of-thought reasoning?
Chain of thought: Chain-of-thought is when a model works through a problem step by step instead of jumping straight to an answer — usually improving accuracy on hard problems.
In plain English
Asked "what's 17 × 24?", you don't see the answer instantly — you compute 17 × 20, then 17 × 4, then add. Models are the same: forced to show intermediate steps, they make fewer leaps of faith. Modern "reasoning models" bake this in, deliberating privately before answering.
Why it matters
- "Think step by step" measurably improves math and logic accuracy
- The idea behind reasoning models that trade speed for correctness
- Visible steps let you audit where the logic went wrong
A concrete example
A model that botches a word problem cold will often nail it when told to list what is known, what is asked, and to solve one step at a time.
Related terms
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