David W. Gulley wrote:
>
> Roman Black wrote:
> >
> > Hi Michael, yep, darn right, half the people in
> > the world (including me!) have been rounding wrongly
> > their entire lives. Very scary. There is and can only
> > be one correct way of rounding decimal numbers...
> >
> > Here is an example, assuming rounding to 3 decimal
> > places, that is 1000 combinations, from 000 to 999.
> >
> > 000 to 499 (first half), 500 to 999 (second half).
> > There are the first 500 combinations in the first
> > half, and the second 500 combination in the second
> > half.
> >
> > All my life I have been rounding at 555, under the
> > false impression that 5 is "half way" in decimal
> > terms... Wow.
> >
> > I asked my 26 yr old science-degreed girlfriend how
> > to round and she looked at me like I was stupid.
> > "5 or more, round up". She was taught correctly.
> >
> > Now I'm wondering if it is mainly us old-timers
> > from the dawn of pocket calculators age that were
> > taught wrong?? Any thoughts, older people??
> >:o)
> > -Roman
>
> Cept for one minor detail,
>
> There are 999 values BETWEEN 0 and 1000.
>    500 IS the halfway point.
>      500 values below it (0 - 499) and
>      500 values above it (501 - 1000).


No, actually 4.99999999999 (repeating) is the
half-way point.
5.0 is definitely in the top half.
Decimal has ten digits, 0-4 are the bottom 5 and
5-9 are the top 5. Anything under 500 is the
bottom half, and anything from 5.0 up is the
top half. Nothing debatable about it, just like
0-127 is the bottom half and 128-255 are the
top half in binary. :o)
-Roman

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