Title: MathReal: We Keep It Real! A Real Scene Benchmark for Evaluating Math Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models
Primary area: datasets and benchmarks
Keywords: Multimodal Large Language Models; Evaluation Benchmarks; Visual Mathematical Reasoning; Robust Visual Perception

Abstract: Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in visual mathematical reasoning across various existing benchmarks. However, these benchmarks are predominantly based on clean or processed multimodal inputs, without incorporating the images provided by real-world Kindergarten through 12th grade (K–12) educational users. To address this gap, we introduce \textsc{MathReal}, a meticulously curated dataset comprising 2,000 mathematical questions with images captured by handheld mobile devices in authentic scenarios. Each question is an image, containing the question text and visual element. We systematically classify the real images into three primary categories: image quality degradation, perspective variation, and irrelevant content interference, which are further delineated into 14 subcategories. Additionally, \textsc{MathReal} spans five core knowledge and ability categories, which encompass three question types and are divided into three difficulty levels. To comprehensively evaluate the multimodal mathematical reasoning abilities of state-of-the-art MLLMs in real-world scenarios, we design six experimental settings that enable a systematic analysis of their performance. Through extensive experimentation, we find that the problem-solving abilities of existing MLLMs are significantly challenged in realistic educational contexts. Based on this, we conduct a thorough analysis of their performance and error patterns, providing insights into their recognition, comprehension, and reasoning capabilities, and outlining directions for future improvements.

TL;DR: This paper introduces MathReal, a benchmark for evaluating the visual mathematical reasoning capabilities of MLLMs on real-world image-based math problems.