This math scares me

[Edward Jason Riedy]

And Costas Menico <costas at meezon.com> writes:
 - Fortunately I discovered I can use "print 5.01 + 5.54" and it does the
 - job. It has the extra intelligence built into it to autoformat

It's called cosmetic rounding, and it's evil.  It tricks you
into believing you have a number you don't.  See 
	W. Kahan, ``Marketing versus Mathematics.''
	http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/MktgMath.pdf
starting on page 13.

Well, ok, there's one circumstance when it's less than purely
evil.  Some laws and regulatory rules mandate certain types of
rounding.  But then it's done with some forethought (and malice?)
and not just silently hoisted upon an unsuspecting programmer.

Jason
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