The Impact of Language on Arithmetic Proficiency: A Multilingual Investigation with Cross-Agent Checking Computation

Chung-Chi Chen, Hiroya Takamura, Ichiro Kobayashi, Yusuke Miyao


Abstract
This paper critically examines the arithmetic capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), uncovering significant limitations in their performance. Our research reveals a notable decline in accuracy for complex calculations involving large numbers, with addition and subtraction tasks showing varying degrees of proficiency. Additionally, we challenge the notion that arithmetic is language-independent, finding up to a 10% difference in performance across twenty languages. The study also compares self-verification methods with cross-agent collaborations, showing that a single model often outperforms collaborative approaches in basic arithmetic tasks. These findings suggest a need to reassess the effectiveness of LLMs in tasks requiring numerical accuracy and precision.
Anthology ID:
2024.naacl-short.53
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 2: Short Papers)
Month:
June
Year:
2024
Address:
Mexico City, Mexico
Editors:
Kevin Duh, Helena Gomez, Steven Bethard
Venue:
NAACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
631–637
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-short.53
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.naacl-short.53
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Chung-Chi Chen, Hiroya Takamura, Ichiro Kobayashi, and Yusuke Miyao. 2024. The Impact of Language on Arithmetic Proficiency: A Multilingual Investigation with Cross-Agent Checking Computation. In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 2: Short Papers), pages 631–637, Mexico City, Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
The Impact of Language on Arithmetic Proficiency: A Multilingual Investigation with Cross-Agent Checking Computation (Chen et al., NAACL 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-short.53.pdf