You have to admit that Siri is a wonderful addition to iOS. She may often apologize because she “can’t take any requests right now,” but she is always there for a joke, a trick or an unexpected flub up. Lance Whitney of CNET recently discovered a new Siri faux pas when trying to subtract decimals.
According to the CNET report, Siri can’t do elementary subtraction. Just ask Siri “What is 3.23 minus 1.27?” and you will get today’s date instead of the correct answer of 1.96. CNET unsuccessfully tried other combinations like “4.23 minus 1.27,” “8.12 minus 3.23,” “6.43 minus 2.41,” and “5.25 minus 4.25. In each case, the answer was a recent calendar date and not the correct numerical answer.
Siri’s ability to correctly answer a decimal problem apparently depends on the equation and how you phrase it. Using the word “subtract” instead of “minus” will produce the correct answer as will asking an equations like “What is 7.87 minus 4.21?”
These answers are provided from Wolfram Alpha and work properly when typed into the Wolfram Alpha website. This suggests something is going haywire in between Wolfram Alpha and your iPhone. It’s just a guess by CNET, but Siri is likely interpreting some of the mathematical strings as a date or time, instead of numbers. Until this is fixed by Apple on the back end, try not to use the personal assistant to do any important decimal math without double checking the calculation.
