Originally Posted by ColinsMum
Originally Posted by 22B
The discussion about intervals and rounding reminds me. DS7 was wondering how are you (officially) supposed to round off -3.5?
Random sampling of the mathematicians around me this evening produces nothing better than a bored "it's policy-dependent", but I think I was taught that even negative halves round up, so -3. This policy has the advantage that 0 isn't unfairly disadvantaged as a target for rounding - makes me slightly queasy to think about the artefacts the other policy might produce, especially if something is added after this rounding stage.
I just googled "rounding negative numbers" and the mathematicians' answer generally is, you can do what you want, just list the various possibilities for rounding conventions, and give them different names.