Runway ID

"GeorgeB" wrote in message
...
Jose, you are with the majority, and you are with what it being taught
in today's schools until higher level mathematics.

The round (exactly) half to the even is correct.

George, you're right that rounding is often performed as you say (i.e.,
exactly half rounds to the nearest even integer), for the reason you say (to
avoid statistical biasing). But I'd quibble about calling that "the" correct
way. The function round(x) can be defined in various standard ways, and
different ways can be more useful for different purposes, but there's no
sense in which one conventional definition is the unique correct one.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Nearest...rFunction.html

--Gary

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 11:03:57 -0400, "Gary Drescher"
wrote:

"GeorgeB" wrote in message
.. .
Jose, you are with the majority, and you are with what it being taught
in today's schools until higher level mathematics.

The round (exactly) half to the even is correct.

George, you're right that rounding is often performed as you say (i.e.,
exactly half rounds to the nearest even integer), for the reason you say (to
avoid statistical biasing). But I'd quibble about calling that "the" correct
way. The function round(x) can be defined in various standard ways, and
different ways can be more useful for different purposes, but there's no
sense in which one conventional definition is the unique correct one.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Nearest...rFunction.html

That, and Mathematica, were what I was going to reference; however,
you are correct that I had my head up that smelly place to consider it
to be "the" correct way. I've it even further up that smelly place to
get off on this when the question was on naming runways based on their
magnetic heading ... which is not a constant thing in the short or
long term, so what to do with a 5 is absolutely not going to be based
on EXACTLY anything.

Thanks for saying it so well.

George