Chain-of-Thought Prompting — ChatGPT
Asking a model to "think step by step" before answering measurably improves accuracy on reasoning, math, and multi-step logic tasks because it forces the model to externalize intermediate steps instead of jumping to a guess..
The prompt
A customer has a $1,200 budget. Product A costs $340 and lasts 2 years. Product B costs $610 and lasts 4 years. Which has the better cost-per-year? Think step by step, show your math, then give a one-line recommendation.
Pro tip: Chain-of-thought helps most on math, logic, debugging, and multi-criteria decisions — skip it for simple factual lookups, it just adds noise.
How to use this prompt
- Copy the prompt using the button above.
- Add any context specific to your situation — the more specific you are, the better the output.
- Paste it into ChatGPT and run it.
- If the answer feels generic, add constraints: audience, length, tone, and what to avoid. That single change fixes most weak output.
Learn the technique
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Module 2 — Core Techniques · Prompt Engineering Fundamentals
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