# Qwen3.8 27B addition in words > Source: > Published: 2026-10-04 23:34:00+00:00 **Research:** [Qwen3.8 27B addition in words](https://github.com/simonw/research/tree/main/qwen38-addition-in-words#readme) Colin Frasier [posted on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/colin-fraser.net/post/3mwopbyznhs2k) about an experiment he ran over two years ago using GPT-4o to see how well it could "compute the sum but return the answer in words" across increasingly large numbers. Here's the chart he shared of those results: I'm confident GPT-4o didn't cheat and use a calculator, especially since it got so many of the calculations wrong, but I was inspired to run the experiment again on local hardware (a DGX Spark) to explore the effect in a fully controlled environment. I pasted his image into a Codex Remote session (GPT-6 Astra) and had it run the same experiment using `Qwen3.8-27B-Q4_K_M.gguf`. Here's the result for a run of 30 attempts per combination with reasoning disabled: Then I ran it again with reasoning enabled. This took a *lot longer* per pair, so instead of running 30 samples per square I ran just one - which results in a much less visually appealing heatmap since each square is either 100% or 0%: It got the right answer in 167 out of 169 attempts, and since these were one-shot I'm confident a second run would produce different results here. Here's a [version of the report](https://gist.github.com/simonw/8ef79c777ad34c53e9c09094800576a5#full-reasoning-transcript-2) that includes the reasoning traces from some of those larger calculations, which include text like this: ``` js Wait, let me redo this more carefully. 4,299,366,105,622 6,088,794,067,970 Let me align them: 4 2 9 9 3 6 6 1 0 5 6 2 2 6 0 8 8 7 9 4 0 6 7 9 7 0 Adding from right to left: Position 1 (units): 2 + 0 = 2 Position 2 (tens): 2 + 7 = 9 Position 3 (hundreds): 6 + 9 = 15, write 5, carry 1 ``` Tags: [mathematics](https://simonwillison.net/tags/mathematics), [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [local-llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/local-llms), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [qwen](https://simonwillison.net/tags/qwen), [llm-reasoning](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm-reasoning), [dgx-spark](https://simonwillison.net/tags/dgx-spark)