Agentic-R1: Distilled Dual-Strategy Reasoning

ACL ARR 2025 May Submission3892 Authors

Abstract: Current long chain-of-thought (long-CoT) models excel at mathematical reasoning but rely on slow and error-prone natural language traces. Tool-augmented agents address arithmetic via code execution, but often falter on complex logical tasks. We introduce a fine-tuning framework, **DualDistill**, that distills complementary reasoning strategies from multiple teachers into a unified student model. Using this approach, we train **Agentic-R1**, which dynamically selects the optimal strategy for each query, invoking tools for arithmetic and algorithmic problems and using text-based reasoning for abstract ones. Our method improves accuracy on computation-intensive tasks and reduces inference latency on standard benchmarks, demonstrating the promise of multi-strategy distillation for robust and efficient reasoning.

Paper Type: Short

Research Area: Machine Learning for NLP

Research Area Keywords: Generation, Language Modeling, Machine Learning for NLP

Contribution Types: Model analysis & interpretability, NLP engineering experiment, Approaches low compute settings-efficiency

Languages Studied: English

Submission Number: 3892