On Saturday, December 29, 2012 2:24:24 PM UTC, Graham P Davis wrote:
On 29 Dec 2012 13:01:30 GMT

"Norman" wrote:



Nick Gardner wrote:



I thought that you always round up if 5 or greater, i.e., 15.15

will always become 15.2, and so on.



I have not heard of any other way of doing this (until now).



The standard meteorological method is to "throw it to the odd".

Therefore, 15.15 becomes 15.1 whereas 15.25 becomes 15.3. I believe

the logic in this is to eliminate systematic bias that would be

caused if rounding was always up (or down).





According to what I remember of my HNC Numerical Analysis course, the

standard method is to "throw to the even;" I assume the meteorological

reason for being the odd one out is to throw away from zero.



--

Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.

Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana. [Marx]

Observers Handbook P 111 Para 8.1.3

"When the instructions specify that the reading is to be reported or recorded only to the nearest whole degree the procedure is as follows;
If the number of tenths in the corrected value is five, "throw to the odd" i.e. round off to the nearest odd whole number; for example 6.5 = 7, 7.5 = 7 8.5 = 9."