RLVR Beats SFT on Qwen2.5 Math +11.9pts
💡RLVR +12pts math on Qwen2.5 from 1 example—SFT hurts reasoning. Checkpoints live.
⚡ 30-Second TL;DR
What Changed
RLVR +11.9pts GSM8K, generalizes to MATH even from 1 example
Why It Matters
Demonstrates RLVR's superiority for reasoning over SFT, enabling efficient training with minimal data; influences fine-tuning strategies for open models.
What To Do Next
Fine-tune your model with GRPO from github.com/jayminban/RLVR-vs-SFT-Qwen2.5-1.5b.
Key Points
- •RLVR +11.9pts GSM8K, generalizes to MATH even from 1 example
- •SFT -15.2pts GSM8K, overrides pretrained knowledge
- •388 checkpoints benchmarked, 2.4M rows in SQLite DB
- •GRPO used on 6-8x RTX GPUs, code/checkpoints on GitHub
- •Reduces no-answer rate but harms accuracy
🧠 Deep Insight
Background and context from public sources — not the original article. 8 sources cited.
🔑 Enhanced Key Takeaways
- •Qwen2.5 series pretrained on up to 18 trillion tokens, achieving MMLU scores over 85, HumanEval over 85, and MATH over 80, marking substantial knowledge and capability gains over Qwen2[3][4].
- •Qwen2.5-Math-72B-Instruct surpasses Qwen2-Math-72B-Instruct and GPT-4o on general performance, with even the 1.5B-Instruct variant competitive against much larger models[3].
- •Qwen2.5 enhances post-training for 8K token generation, structured data comprehension like tables, reliable JSON outputs, and resilience to diverse system prompts for role-playing[3][4].
🔮 Future ImplicationsAI analysis grounded in cited sources
📎 Sources (8)
Factual claims are grounded in the sources below. Forward-looking analysis is AI-generated interpretation.
- shakudo.io — Top 9 Large Language Models
- opencv.org — Qwen
- qwenlm.github.io — Qwen2
- qwenlm.github.io — Qwen2.5 LLM
- vertu.com — Open Source LLM Leaderboard 2026 Rankings Benchmarks the Best Models Right Now
- siliconflow.com — The Best Qwen Models in 2025
- designforonline.com — The Best AI Models So Far in 2026
- virtuslab.com — Best Gen AI Beginning 2026
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Original source: Reddit r/MachineLearning ↗
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