Researchers find that large language models struggle with math

Mathematics is the foundation of countless sciences, allowing us to model things like planetary orbits, atomic motion, signal frequencies, protein folding, and more. Moreover, it's a valuable testbed for the ability to problem solve, because it requires problem solvers to analyze a challenge, pick out good methods, and chain them together to produce an answer. It's revealing, then, that as sophisticated as machine learning models are today, even state-of-the-art models struggle to answer the bulk of math problems correctly. A new study published by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley finds that large language models including OpenAI's GPT-3 can only complete 2.9% to 6.9% of problems from a dataset of over 12,500. The coauthors believe that new algorithmic advancements will likely be needed to give models stronger problem-solving skills.