But that's precisely my point. Making the thing look right this way is likely to make the sum less accurate (especially when they insist at the same time on using rounding methods that will not even out rounding errors in a large sum and will tend on average to make the sum slightly larger than reality -- but that's a different story).
And that's exactly what I was saying about people in finance, accounting and audit departments: they want things to "look right" much more than they want the calculation to be accurate.
I can perfectly understand their concerns and I have no problem with these choices. It even happened at least two or three times that I was the one who suggested them the solution to round first and then sum, as a way to get exactly the look they wanted, but warning them at the same time that it would make the calculations less accurate. In at least one occasion, I even prepared a detailed spreadsheet showing what happened depending on where the rounding was made in a number of scenarios and pointing out that it would look right but be slightly inaccurate in a relatively significant percentage of the invoices (usually just one or two cents above the real amount). They were really unimpressed about lesser accuracy to put it mildly (in fact they didn't give a sh*t about it) and they jumped on the solution that looked right.
So, again, I am not criticizing their choices, but, contrary to what has been said by another monk before, these people should hardly be given as an example of rigor and accuracy.
In reply to Re^13: Reasons for Using Perl 6
by Laurent_R
in thread Reasons for Using Perl 6
by aartist
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