# Program-Aided Language Models

> Program-aided language models (PAL) have the model write a program, typically Python, that expresses its reasoning, and then delegate the actual computation to an interpreter.

- Identifier: PTL-0045
- Category: Reasoning Elicitation
- Canonical URL: https://protologue.com/t/program-aided-language-models/
- Also known as: PAL
- Introduced: 2022

## Description

Offloading arithmetic and logic to code removes calculation errors from the model's output, and PAL outperformed much larger chain-of-thought models on math word problems.

## Related terms

- [Program of Thoughts](https://protologue.com/t/program-of-thoughts/)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting](https://protologue.com/t/chain-of-thought/)
- [Function Calling](https://protologue.com/t/function-calling/)

## Sources

- Gao et al. (2022). PAL: Program-aided Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10435

## Cite this entry

Protologue. (2026). Program-Aided Language Models. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.0.0, PTL-0045). https://protologue.com/t/program-aided-language-models/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)