ROUNDing

[JGA@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (John G. Aspinall)]

    Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1991 05:29 EDT
    From: kddlab!atr-la.atr.co.jp!myers@uunet.UU.NET (John K. Myers)

    What is the rationale for having ROUND round to the nearest
    even integer on a .5 boundary, instead of rounding down in every case?
    Does it make it easier to implement?  Not rounding down
    creates beat frequencies in my numeric representations.
    I'd vote for having the standard changed next time.
    Unless, is there a graphics application or something that likes
    having ROUND wobble?

The behaviour of ROUND is determined by the IEEE standard on
floating-point operations.  The rationale behind the standard is, in
turn, that rounding should be unbiased in a statistical sense.