Talk:19wtn

Rounding

If we use fixed-point numbers for most of the values in a column, we should do this for all of them, and this also requires padding with zeros after the decimal point. This way, all values can be right-aligned so that the decimal points are vertical, making the total size of the values visible at a glance. Rounding is the way that results in less loss of accuracy than truncation. The simplest way to round is taught in school: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 down; 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 up. And that 50/50 feels kind of fair, too. And there's another good reason to deal with the decision of whether 1.5 is closer to 1 or 2, and that's the relative error, which is easy to see on the logarithmic scale. Perhaps this helps to understand that values like 1301.955 and 1200 do not fit in a column of values with 2 decimal places. If the loss of accuracy seems too great, round consistently to 3 decimal places. --Xenwolf (talk) 08:26, 3 June 2021 (UTC)