Same Quantity, Different Answer: Numerical Representation Invariance in Language Models
Numerically equivalent word problems should yield the same canonical answer whether a quantity is written as a decimal, fraction, percentage, number word, scientific notation, or an exactly converted unit. We generate 3,600 exact-rational problems and 8,600 prompts spanning five identity-preserving transformation families, and evaluate five open-weight systems. After a fixed syntax audit that normalizes common answer forms without an LLM judge, canonical accuracy is 0.969-0.996, but orbit correctness falls to 0.848-0.981 and orbit invariance to 0.851-0.981; invariant-but-wrong orbits account for at most 0.003. Most of the broad strict-parser collapse arises because multiplication-form sci...
| Authors | Ephraim Atta-Duncan |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 27 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 27 July 2026 |
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