Towards a Deterministic Math Solver for Clinical Language Models
Paper shows handing arithmetic to a deterministic Python solver beats direct model calculation at 32B but not reliably at 7B on MedCalc-Bench.
Researchers test a Program-Solve interface where clinical LLMs write case-specific Python executed by a restricted local solver instead of doing arithmetic directly. On MedCalc-Bench Verified (1,100 cases, 55 calculators), Qwen2.5-32B-AWQ scored 90.53% with solver handoff versus 83.47% with direct arithmetic (+7.05 points), while Qwen2.5-7B gained an unreliable +3.29 points with a confidence interval spanning zero. The authors audited the benchmark against clinical guidelines and flagged 16 of 55 calculators for version, use, or coefficient concerns.
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