Minerva vs Terracotta

Minerva is a large language model from Google Research built to solve math and science questions through step-by-step written reasoning. It reads problems that mix plain English with LaTeX notation, then writes out solutions involving arithmetic, algebra, and symbolic steps. The model was trained on scientific papers and web pages where mathematical formatting was kept intact, rather than stripped during preprocessing.

Most math-capable models lean on external tools like Python interpreters or calculators at inference time. Minerva takes the opposite bet: it generates full worked solutions from the model weights alone, using chain-of-thought prompting and majority voting across multiple sampled answers. That informal approach covers a wider range of problem types than formal theorem provers, but the trade-off is answers cannot be machine-verified the way Coq or Lean proofs can.

Researchers studying quantitative reasoning in language models use Minerva as a reference point for STEM benchmark performance. The public sample explorer hosts 110 solved problems across algebra, physics, chemistry, and other topics, so anyone can read through how the model arrived at each answer. Educators and ML engineers reviewing benchmark methodology will find the published MATH, MMLU-STEM, GSM8k, and OCWCourses scores useful for comparing against newer models.

Terracotta is a cutting-edge platform designed to enhance the workflow for developers and researchers working with large language models (LLMs). This intuitive and user-friendly platform allows you to manage, iterate, and evaluate your fine-tuned models with ease. With Terracotta, you can securely upload data, fine-tune models for various tasks like classification and text generation, and create comprehensive evaluations to compare model performance using both qualitative and quantitative metrics. Our tool supports connections to major providers like OpenAI and Cohere, ensuring you have access to a broad range of LLM capabilities. Terracotta is the creation of Beri Kohen and Lucas Pauker, AI enthusiasts and Stanford graduates, who are dedicated to advancing LLM development. Join our email list to stay informed on the latest updates and features that Terracotta has to offer.