This is more how an LLM thinks about math internally - an LLM version of drilled tables being used for mental arithmetic "as humans do".

When humans stall on these tasks, they reach for pen and paper, a slide rule, a calculator, etc.

Mathematica is overkill for arithmetic, in addition it's licenced and can cost a bit extra.

If an LLM were to reach for a light cheap arithmetic tool something like bc would be a good first stop - a CLI tool with a language that supports arbitrary precision numbers with interactive execution of statements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language)

They do. I asked CharGPT for 327 x 48 and it used the "ChatGPT Instruments" calculator.

Previously it used to run Python scripts, and may still do for more complex calculations.

writing and calling an entire python setup seems massive overkill, surely just have an internal way of calling a simple calculator function would be millions of times faster