Properties2
| Type | Concept |
| Note created | Jun 16, 2025 |
Zero-Shot Chain-of-Thought (COT) is a prompting strategy that encourages language models to break down complex problems by explicitly asking them to “think step by step” before providing a final answer. This approach leverages the model’s inherent reasoning capabilities without providing any examples.
Structure
The basic structure follows this pattern:
- Task instruction
- Question
- Explicit request: “Let’s think step by step”
Example
From the MapWise benchmark:
Instruction - Your task is to answer the question based on the provided Image.
Question - Count the states bordering Canada with a value lower than New Mexico?
Output - Let's think step by step, explain the steps and then provide the final answer.