MathArena: Evaluating LLMs on Uncontaminated Math Competitions

MathArena is a platform for the evaluation of LLMs on the latest math competitions and olympiads. It is hosted on matharena.ai. This repository contains all the code used for model evaluation of the competitions. The README explains how to run your models or add a new competition.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Evaluating a New Model
  • Model Configuration
  • Running the Model
  • Local VLLM Usage
• Adding a Competition
  • Setting Up Competition Files
  • Verifying Problem Statements
  • Running Models on Competitions
• Viewing Results
• Evaluation logs

Installation

MathArena uses UV to manage dependencies.

Install UV

• macOS and Linux:

  curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

• Windows:

  powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

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Evaluating a New Model

Model Configuration

Create a configuration file in the configs/ folder. Each config must include:

• Required:
  • model: Model name. Reasoning effort of OpenAI models can be set by appending --[low/medium/high] to the model name, e.g., o3-mini--high.
  • api: API provider (supported options with their corresponding API keys):
    • openai: OPENAI_API_KEY
    • anthropic: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
    • together: TOGETHER_API_KEY
    • google: GOOGLE_API_KEY
    • deepseek: DEEPSEEK_API_KEY
    • openrouter: OPENROUTER_API_KEY
    • vllm: (runs locally; no API key required)
  • human_readable_id: A unique, descriptive identifier.
• Optional Parameters:
  • API settings like temperature, top_p, and top_k (default: temperature is from competition config, see Adding a Competition).
  • max_tokens: Max number of tokens for the model (default: from competition config, see Adding a Competition).
  • concurrent_requests: Number of parallel requests to API (default: 30).
  • timeout: Request timeout in seconds (default: 500).
  • max_retries: Retry attempts to API (default: 50).
  • read_cost & write_cost: Cost per million tokens in USD for input and output tokens (default: 1 each).

Running the model

Execute the following command to evaluate a model on a competition:

uv run python scripts/run.py --configs path/to/your/config --comp path/to/competition

• path/to/your/config: Relative path from the configs/ folder to the model configuration.
• path/to/competition: Relative path from the data/ folder to the competition folder.

Example:

uv run python scripts/run.py --configs openai/gpt-4o.yaml --comp aime/aime_2025_I

Additional Flags:

• skip_existing: Skip problems already processed through the model.
• n: Number of runs per problem (default: 4).

Running Models Locally Using VLLM

If using a local model with vllm, start the server:

vllm serve [[model_name]] --dtype auto --api-key token-abc123

Adding a Competition

Adding a competition can be done in several quick steps.

Setting Up Competition Files

In the data/ folder, create a new directory for your competition with the following structure:

1. Problems:
   • Create a subfolder problems/ and add each problem as a separate LaTeX file named 1.tex, 2.tex, …, {k}.tex, where k is the number of problems in your competition. You can skip a problem if you want/need to.
2. Answers:
   • Add an answers.csv file with columns id and answer.
     • id: The problem filename (without the .tex extension).
     • answer: The integer answer.
3. Competition Config:
   • Create a config.yaml with:
     • instruction: Instructions for the model. Must require the final answer be in \boxed{} (for correct parsing).
     • default_temperature: Default temperature for runs.
     • default_max_tokens: Default max tokens.
     • strict_parsing: true for strict format matching (e.g., only \boxed{43} is accepted) or false for lenient parsing.
     • n_problems: Total number of problems.

Verifying Problem Statements

Ensure your LaTeX problems compile correctly:

uv run python scripts/check_latex.py --comp path/to/competition

Then, build the latex/main.tex to generate a PDF and confirm all problems appear as expected.

Running Models on Competitions

To run multiple models (possibly across different APIs), use:

uv run python scripts/run_multiple.py --apis openai google anthropic together --comp path/to/competition

This will run models from the same API sequentially and from different APIs concurrently. Options:

• --simul: Run all models in parallel, even if they use the same API.
• models: Provide space-separated regex patterns to filter models. A model is only run if it matches any of the regexes.
• skip_existing: Skip problems already processed through the model.
• n: Number of runs per problem (default: 4).

Note: For local vllm usage, ensure the vllm server is running as described above. Logs will be found in the logs/ folder.

Viewing Results

Launch a local web server to inspect the results:

uv run python scripts/app.py --comp path/to/competition

Access the app at http://localhost:5001/. Warning signs for solutions indicate a potential problem with the model run and should be manually verified. Any warning is caused by one of the following problems:

• 💀: parser threw an error or encountered something unexpected.
• ⚠️: The correct answer might be present in the model answer, but it was not extracted.
• ❕: Model likely hit max token limit.

If issues are found, delete the corresponding output file or fix the parser and rerun the model with skip_existing. If the parser requires a manual overwrite, you can edit src/matharena/parse_manual.py and add a key-value pair mapping the model solution to a parseable solution.

Evaluation Logs

You can find logs from our evaluation containing full reasoning traces (if availabel) and solutions produced by the models at the following link: https://files.sri.inf.ethz.ch/matharena/matharena_data.zip.

Post-Processing Results

To post-process results to add them to our website, you should run

bash scripts/website/postprocess.sh path/to/competition

Once processed, you should copy the files in web_outputs/path/to/competition to our website repository.

Citation

@misc{balunovic_srimatharena_2025,
	title = {MathArena: Evaluating LLMs on Uncontaminated Math Competitions},
  author = {Mislav Balunović, Jasper Dekoninck, Ivo Petrov, Nikola Jovanović, Martin Vechev},
	copyright = {MIT},
	url = {https://matharena.ai/},
	publisher = {SRI Lab, ETH Zurich},
	month = feb,
	year = {2025},
}