Rounding up or down when 0.5

Question

I am having an issue with the way Javascript is rounding numbers when hitting 0.5. I am writing levies calculators, and am noticing a 0.1c discrepancy in the results.

The problem is that the result for them is 21480.705 which my application translates into 21480.71, whereas the tariff says 21480.70.

This is what I am seeing with Javascript:

(21480.105).toFixed(2)
"21480.10"
(21480.205).toFixed(2)
"21480.21"
(21480.305).toFixed(2)
"21480.31"
(21480.405).toFixed(2)
"21480.40"
(21480.505).toFixed(2)
"21480.51"
(21480.605).toFixed(2)
"21480.60"
(21480.705).toFixed(2)
"21480.71"
(21480.805).toFixed(2)
"21480.81"
(21480.905).toFixed(2)
"21480.90"

Questions:

• What the hell is going on with this erratic rouding?
• What's the quickest easiest way to get a "rounded up" result (when hitting 0.5)?

Answer 1

So as some of the others already explained the reason for the 'erratic' rounding is a floating point precision problem. You can investigate this by using the toExponential() method of a JavaScript number.

(21480.905).toExponential(20)
#>"2.14809049999999988358e+4"
(21480.805).toExponential(20)
#>"2.14808050000000002910e+4"

As you can see here 21480.905, gets a double representation that is slightly smaller than 21480.905, while 21480.805 gets a double representation slightly larger than the original value. Since the toFixed() method works with the double representation and has no idea of your original intended value, it does all it can and should do with the information it has.

One way to work around this, is to shift the decimal point to the number of decimals you require by multiplication, then use the standard Math.round(), then shift the decimal point back again, either by division or multiplication by the inverse. Then finally we call toFixed() method to make sure the output value gets correctly zero-padded.

var x1 = 21480.905;
var x2 = -21480.705;

function round_up(x,nd)
{
  var rup=Math.pow(10,nd);
  var rdwn=Math.pow(10,-nd); // Or you can just use 1/rup
  return (Math.round(x*rup)*rdwn).toFixed(nd)
}
function round_down(x,nd)
{
  var rup=Math.pow(10,nd);
  var rdwn=Math.pow(10,-nd); 
  return (Math.round(x*-rup)*-rdwn).toFixed(nd)
}

function round_tozero(x,nd)
{
   return x>0?round_down(x,nd):round_up(x,nd) 
}



console.log(x1,'up',round_up(x1,2));
console.log(x1,'down',round_down(x1,2));
console.log(x1,'to0',round_tozero(x1,2));

console.log(x2,'up',round_up(x2,2));
console.log(x2,'down',round_down(x2,2));
console.log(x2,'to0',round_tozero(x2,2));

Finally: Encountering a problem like this is usually a good time to sit down and have a long think about wether you are actually using the correct data type for your problem. Since floating point errors can accumulate with iterative calculation, and since people are sometimes strangely sensitive with regards to money magically disappearing/appearing in the CPU, maybe you would be better off keeping monetary counters in integer 'cents' (or some other well thought out structure) rather than floating point 'dollar'.