PECC: Problem Extraction and Coding Challenges

Patrick Haller, Jonas Golde, Alan Akbik


Abstract
Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have showcased their exceptional abilities across various tasks, such as code generation, problem-solving and reasoning. Existing benchmarks evaluate tasks in isolation, yet the extent to which LLMs can understand prose-style tasks, identify the underlying problems, and then generate appropriate code solutions is still unexplored. Addressing this gap, we introduce PECC, a novel benchmark derived from Advent Of Code (AoC) challenges and Project Euler, including 2396 problems. Unlike conventional benchmarks, PECC requires LLMs to interpret narrative-embedded problems, extract requirements, and generate executable code. A key feature of our dataset is the complexity added by natural language prompting in chat-based evaluations, mirroring real-world instruction ambiguities. Results show varying model performance between narrative and neutral problems, with specific challenges in the Euler math-based subset with GPT-3.5-Turbo passing 50% of the AoC challenges and only 8% on the Euler problems. By probing the limits of LLMs’ capabilities, our benchmark provides a framework to monitor and assess the subsequent progress of LLMs as a universal problem solver.
Anthology ID:
2024.lrec-main.1111
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)
Month:
May
Year:
2024
Address:
Torino, Italia
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, Nianwen Xue
Venues:
LREC | COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA and ICCL
Note:
Pages:
12690–12699
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1111
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Patrick Haller, Jonas Golde, and Alan Akbik. 2024. PECC: Problem Extraction and Coding Challenges. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 12690–12699, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
Cite (Informal):
PECC: Problem Extraction and Coding Challenges (Haller et al., LREC-COLING 2024)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing_page/2024.lrec-main.1111.pdf