(Disclaimer: I have ADHD and am completely useless when it comes to math. So please forgive me for being super-stupid on the subject.)
To my understanding, Mathematics are seen as completely logical. Which I don’t have a problem with except for when it comes to one certain thing in math that I just can’t make sense of as being considered logical:
Rounding of decimals.
To my understanding, the rule is that when you have a decimal that is 5 or higher, you round up. If 4 or lower you round down.
Two things that I don’t understand about this:
1. When you round up, you magically pull value out of the air that wasn’t there to begin with, and do the opposite when rounding down. How is this considered logical?
2. The rule isn’t applied universally. I’ve seen cases when, for example, making store purchases, no matter how low the decimal, it is rounded up and not down.
I appreciate any help you guys can give. Thank you in advance for the assistance! <3
In: 6
Rounding sacrifices precision for convenience. Essentially, there are plenty of situations where you don’t want to have a long string of numbers after the decimal point so you just pick a point to cut it off. We use the .5 as a rule of thumb in most cases just so everyone is on the same page, but in some cases it makes sense to always round up or down.
For example, when I’m doing carpentry, maybe I’ll need a piece of wood that’s between two of the marks on my tape measure. In that case I’ll round up for two reasons. I don’t have the equipment to make a precise enough measurement so I have to round. And I’m always going to round up because it’s easy to shave off a little more later if I need to.
Rounding is all about making numbers easier to use. So the logic comes in to determine how to best round a number to fit the situation.
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