GPT Can Solve Mathematical Problems Without a Calculator
Authors: name: Zhen Yang; name: Ming Ding; name: Qingsong Lv; name: Zhihuan Jiang; name: Zehai He; name: Yuyi Guo; name: Jinfeng Bai; name: Jie Tang
Published: 2023-09-06 06:18:16

Abstract: Previous studies have typically assumed that large language models are unable
to accurately perform arithmetic operations, particularly multiplication of >8
digits, and operations involving decimals and fractions, without the use of
calculator tools. This paper aims to challenge this misconception. With
sufficient training data, a 2 billion-parameter language model can accurately
perform multi-digit arithmetic operations with almost 100% accuracy without
data leakage, significantly surpassing GPT-4 (whose multi-digit multiplication
accuracy is only 4.3%). We also demonstrate that our MathGLM, fine-tuned from
GLM-10B on a dataset with additional multi-step arithmetic operations and math
problems described in text, achieves similar performance to GPT-4 on a
5,000-samples Chinese math problem test set.