6arXiv cs.CL (Computation and Language)·
AdaPrefix-GRPO: Adaptive prefix control doubles GRPO accuracy on hard math reasoning
A new arXiv preprint introduces AdaPrefix-GRPO, a method that addresses GRPO's failure to learn from problems where no rollout succeeds by prepending correct solution prefixes and dynamically adjusting prefix length to maintain ~50% success rate per problem throughout training. The prefix assistance is gradually withdrawn so the final model solves problems unaided. On hard math benchmarks, the method more than doubles GRPO accuracy for a 0.6B model (2.1x) and achieves 1.7x improvement on AIME, while halving trace length, with larger gains on smaller models. The implementation requires only data preparation changes and a loss mask, leaving the trainer unchanged.
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