It's the Problem, Not the Path: Budget and Difficulty Confounds in LLM Reasoning Trajectories
Reasoning traces of large language models are widely read as containing "breakthrough" moments and early-legible fates. Both readings rest on measurements missing a counterfactual control at the level of the claim; we supply both controls. First, a restart-controlled truncation probe separates when a solution fits the continuation budget from when a prefix carries value that fresh computation cannot buy, comparing per-anchor continuation solve rates against from-scratch restart curves at matched total generated-token budget. Applied to 178 problem-model cells (89 MATH problems x two small open models, an outcome-blind but difficulty-targeted cohort), exactly 1 of 178 cells survives as pre...
| Authors | Yigit Utku Bulut |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 3 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 3 September 2026 |
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