Rounding Up number?

Does anyone know how, or whether it's possible to get Pages to round numbers up instead of down for .5's?

for example get 19.065 to round to 19.07 instead of 19.06?

the only time i can get it to round up is for 1's ( 12.015 would round to 12.02 for example)

PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on May 17, 2007 11:48 AM

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2 replies

May 17, 2007 1:07 PM in response to themanical

The rounding principle Pages uses is round-to-even, where the digit is rounded to the nearest even digit if it is odd. "When dealing with large sets of scientific or statistical data, where trends are important, traditional rounding on average biases the data upwards slightly. [...] the round-to-even rule tends to reduce the total rounding error, with (on average) an equal portion of numbers rounding up as rounding down. This generally reduces the upwards skewing of the result."

So while I don't think there is a way to change the default rounding principle that is used by Pages, it is probably the appropriate behaviour (at least in most cases, although perhaps not in your specific instance).

May 17, 2007 1:36 PM in response to themanical

Are you talking about using the ROUND(x,y) function? It does round up; i.e., ROUND(19.065,2) returns 19.07.
From what I can tell, this is a display issue only. For example, if you reduce the number of decimal places in your number format, it APPEARS to "round" as you describe. But the value actually is retained. (To see this, multiply the cell value by 10 or 100 in another cell; the result will be that factor times the original cell entry, NOT the "rounded" value displayed.)
However, if you apply the ROUND function, it works as you would expect -- traditional rounding.
If you check more closely, I think you'll find that It does what you describe not just for 1, but for any odd integer preceding the 5. Even integers "round" down, odd integers "round" up.
This is called "banker's rounding". It's used by -- yep, bankers -- and commonly in databases like Access. It tends to balance out the effects of rounding. It does seem odd that Pages isn't consistent between formatted and actual rounding, though.

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

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Rounding Up number?

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