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Numeral Tokenization Audit


If "1234" is four tokens in one model and one in another, arithmetic gets harder for free.


Key Insight

Tokenizers disagree on how to split numbers: some keep multi-digit chunks together, others break every digit apart. How digits are grouped directly shapes how hard arithmetic is for the model.

Why This Matters

Early LLMs were notoriously bad at math partly because of inconsistent numeral tokenization. Auditing it reveals a concrete, fixable reason a model can fail at even simple sums.