---
title: 'PAL: Program-aided Language Models'
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license_note: 'paper is CC0 1.0 (verified on arXiv abs page 2026-11-11; icon zero-1.0.png, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/); note is our own summary'
source: https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/2211-10435-pal.md
source_license: 'CC0 1.0'
attribution: 'Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted). Source: Luyu Gao, Aman Madaan, Shuyan Zhou, Uri Alon, Pengfei Liu, Yiming Yang, Jamie Callan, Graham Neubig, PAL: Program-aided Language Models (CC0 1.0).'
author: 'iinventedlight (AI-assisted)'
date: 2026-11-11
status: published
approved_by: "Cole Withington, 2026-11-11 20:58 PT, Grok Bot chat widget t1717s7407: \"Publish all 100 including the LLMs Encode Clinical Knowledge note\""
checked_on: 2026-11-11
as_of: 2026-11-11
confidence: medium
untested: 'Not reproduced. Abs page and HTML key sections read 2026-11-11. Named code URLs checked; code not run.'
category: arxiv
topic_area: 'ai-research: reasoning'
tags: arxiv, reasoning, tools
arxiv_id: 2211.10435
alias: 2211.10435-pal
sources:
  - id: S1
    title: 'PAL: Program-aided Language Models'
    publisher: arXiv
    authors: 'Luyu Gao, Aman Madaan, Shuyan Zhou, Uri Alon, Pengfei Liu, Yiming Yang, Jamie Callan, Graham Neubig'
    url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10435
    version_read: 'v2 (27 Jan 2023)'
    accessed: 2026-11-11
    license: 'CC0 1.0'
---
# PAL: Program-aided Language Models

## Summary
Program-Aided Language models (PAL) use a language model to read a natural-language problem and generate a program, then offload the solution step to a runtime such as a Python interpreter. The authors evaluate this approach on 13 mathematical, symbolic, and algorithmic reasoning tasks. They report that PAL using Codex reached state-of-the-art few-shot accuracy on GSM8K, surpassing PaLM-540B with chain-of-thought by an absolute 15% top-1. Code and data are publicly available. [S1]

## Claims
- id: C1
  claim: 'PAL generates programs as intermediate reasoning steps and offloads solving to an interpreter.'
  source: S1
  evidence: "offloads the solution step to a runtime such as a Python interpreter"
- id: C2
  claim: 'They evaluate across 13 mathematical, symbolic, and algorithmic reasoning tasks.'
  source: S1
  evidence: "across 13 mathematical, symbolic, and algorithmic reasoning tasks"
- id: C3
  claim: 'They report PAL with Codex surpasses PaLM-540B chain-of-thought by an absolute 15% top-1 on GSM8K.'
  source: S1
  evidence: "surpassing PaLM-540B which uses chain-of-thought by absolute 15% top-1"

## Verification
- Code available: Comments and paper: http://reasonwithpal.com/ (HTTPS https://reasonwithpal.com/ returned HTTP 200 on 2026-11-11). Not run.
- Reproduced: not reproduced (2026-11-11). Code not run.
- Related work: Live notes 2201-11903-chain-of-thought-prompting and 2402-01030-codeact. This is the paper-verification note for PAL itself.
- Limits: The 15% GSM8K gap is a reported few-shot result against PaLM-540B with chain-of-thought, using Codex, and may not transfer to later models. Interpreter offloading helps arithmetic; it does not by itself fix a wrong program.
- License: CC0 1.0 on the abs page (2026-11-11; icon zero-1.0.png; http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Submitted 18 Nov 2022 (v1); last revised 27 Jan 2023 (v2). Sources: [S1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10435, v2 (27 Jan 2023). checked_on: 2026-11-11.

## When to apply
Use when a quantitative problem is better solved by generating code than by doing the arithmetic in free text.

## Facts
- id: F1
  claim: 'PAL uses a language model to generate a program and a Python interpreter to compute the answer.'
  confidence: medium
  date: 2026-11-11
  sources: [S1]
  license: CC0 1.0
- id: F2
  claim: 'The authors evaluate on 13 mathematical, symbolic, and algorithmic reasoning tasks.'
  confidence: medium
  date: 2026-11-11
  sources: [S1]
  license: CC0 1.0
- id: F3
  claim: 'They report that PAL using Codex surpasses PaLM-540B with chain-of-thought by an absolute 15% top-1 on GSM8K.'
  confidence: medium
  date: 2026-11-11
  sources: [S1]
  license: CC0 1.0

## Sources
- [S1] arXiv 2211.10435, https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10435. License: CC0 1.0. v2 (27 Jan 2023). Accessed 2026-11-11.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted). Paper is CC0 1.0.

---

Agents: [/agents.md](/agents.md) | [/.well-known/agent-library.json](/.well-known/agent-library.json).