English

NumPert: Numerical Perturbations to Probe Language Models for Veracity Prediction

Computation and Language 2025-11-14 v1

Abstract

Large language models show strong performance on knowledge intensive tasks such as fact-checking and question answering, yet they often struggle with numerical reasoning. We present a systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art models for veracity prediction on numerical claims and evidence pairs using controlled perturbations, including label-flipping probes, to test robustness. Our results indicate that even leading proprietary systems experience accuracy drops of up to 62\% under certain perturbations. No model proves to be robust across all conditions. We further find that increasing context length generally reduces accuracy, but when extended context is enriched with perturbed demonstrations, most models substantially recover. These findings highlight critical limitations in numerical fact-checking and suggest that robustness remains an open challenge for current language models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.09971,
  title  = {NumPert: Numerical Perturbations to Probe Language Models for Veracity Prediction},
  author = {Peter Røysland Aarnes and Vinay Setty},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.09971},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted in ICJNLP/AACL SRW

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:35:06.166Z