Investigating the Robustness of Deductive Reasoning with Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) have been shown to achieve impressive results for many reasoning-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, suggesting a degree of deductive reasoning capability. However, it remains unclear to which extent LLMs, in both informal and autoformalisation methods, are robust on logical deduction tasks. Moreover, while many LLM-based deduction methods have been proposed, there is a lack of a systematic study that analyses the impact of their design components. Addressing these two challenges, we propose the first study of the robustness of LLM-based deductive reasoning methods. We devise a framework with two families of perturbations: adversarial noise and counterfactual statements, which jointly generate seven perturbed datasets. We organize the landscape of LLM reasoners according to their reasoning format, formalisation syntax, and feedback for error recovery. The results show that adversarial noise affects autoformalisation, while counterfactual statements influence all approaches. Detailed feedback does not improve overall accuracy despite reducing syntax errors, pointing to the challenge of LLM-based methods to self-correct effectively.

FEM-based Neural Networks for Solving Incompressible Fluid Flows and Related Inverse Problems

The numerical simulation and optimization of technical systems described by partial differential equations is expensive, especially in multi-query scenarios in which the underlying equations have to be solved for different parameters. A comparatively new approach in this context is to combine the good approximation properties of neural networks (for parameter dependence) with the classical finite element method (for discretization). However, instead of considering the solution mapping of the PDE from the parameter space into the FEM-discretized solution space as a purely data-driven regression problem, so-called physically informed regression problems have proven to be useful. In these, the equation residual is minimized during the training of the neural network, i.e. the neural network "learns" the physics underlying the problem. In this paper, we extend this approach to saddle-point and non-linear fluid dynamics problems, respectively, namely stationary Stokes and stationary Navier-Stokes equations. In particular, we propose a modification of the existing approach: Instead of minimizing the plain vanilla equation residual during training, we minimize the equation residual modified by a preconditioner. By analogy with the linear case, this also improves the condition in the present non-linear case. Our numerical examples demonstrate that this approach significantly reduces the training effort and greatly increases accuracy and generalizability. Finally, we show the application of the resulting parameterized model to a related inverse problem.