• Author(s): Renrui Zhang, Xinyu Wei, Dongzhi Jiang, Yichi Zhang, Ziyu Guo, Chengzhuo Tong, Jiaming Liu, Aojun Zhou, Bin Wei, Shanghang Zhang, Peng Gao, Hongsheng Li

“MAVIS: Mathematical Visual Instruction Tuning” introduces MAVIS, a novel framework designed to enhance the capabilities of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) in understanding and solving mathematical problems that involve visual elements. This research addresses the challenge of integrating visual mathematical content, such as diagrams and equations, with textual descriptions to improve the problem-solving abilities of MLLMs.

MAVIS focuses on three key areas to achieve this integration: visual encoding of mathematical diagrams, alignment between diagrams and language, and the development of a large-scale visual mathematical tuning dataset. The framework aims to bridge the gap between visual and textual information, enabling MLLMs to process and understand complex mathematical problems more effectively.

One of the core innovations of MAVIS is its approach to visual encoding. The framework employs advanced techniques to encode mathematical diagrams in a way that preserves their structural and semantic information. This encoding process is crucial for ensuring that the visual content is accurately represented and can be effectively used in conjunction with textual descriptions. To align diagrams with language, MAVIS uses a sophisticated alignment mechanism that maps visual elements to their corresponding textual counterparts. This alignment is essential for understanding the relationships between different parts of a mathematical problem and for generating coherent and contextually appropriate solutions. By aligning visual and textual information, MAVIS enhances the model’s ability to interpret and solve problems that involve both modalities.

The paper also introduces a large-scale visual mathematical tuning dataset, which is used to train and fine-tune the MLLMs. This dataset includes a diverse range of mathematical problems and visual content, providing a robust foundation for improving the model’s performance. The dataset is curated to ensure high quality and relevance, making it a valuable resource for advancing research in this area. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of MAVIS. The authors evaluate their approach on several benchmark datasets and compare it with existing state-of-the-art methods. The results show that MAVIS significantly improves the performance of MLLMs in solving mathematical problems that involve visual elements. The framework’s ability to integrate visual and textual information leads to more accurate and reliable solutions.

“MAVIS: Mathematical Visual Instruction Tuning” presents a significant advancement in the field of multimodal large language models. By focusing on visual encoding, diagram-language alignment, and the development of a comprehensive tuning dataset, the authors offer a powerful framework for enhancing the problem-solving capabilities of MLLMs. This research has important implications for various applications, including education, scientific research, and any field that requires the integration of visual and textual mathematical content.