Rounding fun – Banker’s rounding gets me again

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BronwenWeeGo.jpgA little suprise you may run into with .NET (particularly if your dealing with monetary amounts) is that the .NET rounding uses roundng-to-nearest (bankers rounding). This rounds off to the nearest even number. For example:

5.15 -> 5.2
5.25 -> 5.2
5.35 -> 5.4
5.45 -> 5.4

Normal arithmetic rounding would result in:

5.15 -> 5.2
5.25 -> 5.3
5.35 -> 5.4
5.45 -> 5.5

Although the .NET bankers rounding is more accurate overall (arithmetic can introduce a slight bias), most people expect arithmetic rounding. The following code performs arithmetic rouding in C#:

Code:

      /// <summary>
      /// Arithmetic rounding routine for decimals.
      /// </summary>
      /// <remarks>
      /// The normal .NET rounding uses ‘bankers rounding’. When this
      /// encounters a tipping point, it rounds to the nearest even number.
      /// This rountine implements the more conventional rounding, rounding
      /// up on 5 or above, or down otherwise.
      /// </remarks>
      /// <param name=”d”>The number to round.</param>
      /// <param name=”decimals”>Number of decimal places to round to.</param>
      /// <returns>The rounded number.</returns>
      public static decimal ArithmeticRound (decimal d, int decimals)
      {
         decimal power = (decimal)Math.Pow(10, decimals);
         // Note: converting to positive number before calculating
         // rounding, so that we don’t need separate logic for negative
         // number handling
         decimal result = decimal.Floor((Math.Abs(d) * power) + 0.5m) / power;
         return result * Math.Sign(d);
      }
 

For additional information, see:

http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/joshua/archive/2005/06/15/6556.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=196652