[Python-ideas] Deprecate the round builtin

[MRAB]

On 2012-09-26 21:17, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> Mark Dickinson wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 8:36 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>>> It's actually quite common in finance and time calculations to
>>> round to the nearest say basis point, cent or say micro second
>>> in calculations
>>
>> That's exactly where the problems creep in, though.  Naive users
>> expect rounding to give 'correct' results for decimal halfway cases,
>> and then are surprised when it doesn't.
>>
>>>>> round(2.675, 2)
>> 2.67
>>
>> So you end up explaining again and again that computing binary
>> approximations to decimal rounds of binary approximations of decimal
>> halfway cases is a bad idea.
>
> But that's the fault of round(), is it ? ;-) It's more one of
> educating people of what to expect when working with floats.
>
> Your example is a typical case that comes up when people enter
> examples and wonder why they don't see the expected results.
>
> In calculations, statistics, numeric, etc. such corner cases are
> not all that common, so things are not as bad as they may appear
> on first sight.
>
If we're going to move 'round' into 'math' because it sometimes gives
results which puzzle naive users, shouldn't we do the same to 'float'?
:-)