Zelin Tan
2026
Scaling Behaviors of LLM Reinforcement Learning Post-Training: An Empirical Study in Mathematical Reasoning
Zelin Tan | Hejia Geng | Xiaohang Yu | Mulei Zhang | Guancheng Wan | Yifan Zhou | Qiang He | Xiangyuan Xue | Heng Zhou | Yutao Fan | Zhong-Zhi Li | Zaibin Zhang | Guibin Zhang | Chen Zhang | Zhenfei Yin | Philip Torr | Lei Bai
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Zelin Tan | Hejia Geng | Xiaohang Yu | Mulei Zhang | Guancheng Wan | Yifan Zhou | Qiang He | Xiangyuan Xue | Heng Zhou | Yutao Fan | Zhong-Zhi Li | Zaibin Zhang | Guibin Zhang | Chen Zhang | Zhenfei Yin | Philip Torr | Lei Bai
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
While scaling laws for large language models (LLMs) during pre-training have been extensively studied, their behavior under reinforcement learning (RL) post-training remains largely unexplored. This paper investigates the scaling behavior of Large Language Model (LLM) reinforcement learning post-training, focusing on mathematical reasoning. Through experiments across the Qwen2.5 series (0.5B to 72B), we characterize how model scale, data, and compute interact. Our analysis yields four key findings: 1. Larger models consistently demonstrate superior compute and data efficiency. 2. The relationship between model performance and training resources follows a **predictive power-law** across both base and instruction-tuned models. 3. RL learning efficiency exhibits a latent **saturation trend** with increasing model scale. 4. In data-constrained regimes, performance is primarily driven by the **total volume of training data** rather than sample uniqueness. These results offer practical guidelines for scaling reasoning capabilities through reinforcement learning post-training.
AgentAsk: Multi-Agent Systems Need to Ask
Bohan Lin | Kuo Yang | Zelin Tan | Yingchuan Lai | Chen Zhang | Guibin Zhang | Xinlei Yu | Miao Yu | Xu Wang | Yudong Zhang | Yang Wang
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Bohan Lin | Kuo Yang | Zelin Tan | Yingchuan Lai | Chen Zhang | Guibin Zhang | Xinlei Yu | Miao Yu | Xu Wang | Yudong Zhang | Yang Wang
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Multi-agent systems (MAS) built on large language models promise improved problem-solving through collaboration, yet they often fail to consistently outperform strong single-agent baselines due to error propagation at inter-agent message handoffs. In this work, we conduct a systematic empirical analysis of such failures and introduce an edge-level error taxonomy that identifies four dominant error types: Data Gap, Signal Corruption, Referential Drift, and Capability Gap, as primary sources of failure in multi-agent interactions. Building on this taxonomy, we propose AgentAsk, a lightweight clarification module designed to intervene at the edge level in MAS to prevent cascading errors. The module operates by strategically applying minimal clarifications at critical points within the system, improving the accuracy and efficiency of the overall task. AgentAsk is trained to balance the trade-offs between clarification cost, latency, and accuracy, while it is also architecture-agnostic and can be easily integrated into existing systems. Evaluated across five benchmarks, AgentAsk consistently improves accuracy by up to 4.69%, while keeping latency and extra costs below 10% compared to baseline MAS, showcasing its high efficiency and minimal overhead. The code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/AgentAsk-3432.