[Haskell-cafe] Why 'round' does not just round numbers ?

[Henning Thielemann]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Janis Voigtlaender wrote:

> Henning Thielemann wrote:
>> 
>> On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, L.Guo wrote:
>> 
>>> I think this is unresonable. then try it in GHC 6.8.3.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Prelude> round 3.5
>>> 4
>>> Prelude> round 2.5
>>> 2
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Is there any explanation about that ?
>> 
>> 
>> It's the definition we learnt in school ...
>
> Hmm, Henning, this is strange. The two of us went to the very same
> school, but I know for a fact that I learnt 2.5 to round to 3, not 2 as
> above. ;-)

I meant the school before GCG! :-]

So it seems to differ between schools and even teachers. (Much like the 
question whether zero should be counted as natural number or not.)


>> I think one reason is that repeated rounding should not be worse than 
>> rounding in one go. Consider the rule 'use ceiling when the first removed 
>> digit is 5'. Then
>> 
>> 0.45 - (round to one place) -> 0.5 - (round to integer) -> 1
>> 
>> but
>> 
>> 0.45 - (round to integer) -> 0
>
> That is of course true (and was the topic of heated discussion with my
> fourth grade math teacher), but does not explain 2.5 -> 2.

Because doing otherwise would be odd rounding. ;-)