"Jerry W. Lewis" wrote:

"joeu2004" wrote:

On Mar 3, 4:41 am, Jerry W. Lewis wrote:
"joeu2004" wrote:
Note: The bank might use "banker's rounding" rules, which always
rounds a half-cent to even cents.
[....]
I would be very interested in any evidence that this rounding rule has ever
been used in banking.

I would be very interested in any evidence to the contrary; or in
evidence that banks use the "normal" rounding rules. ...

The banking sites I have seen that give instructions for Euro conversions
explicitly specify 5-up rounding. The US IRS explicitly specifies 5-up
rounding.

More subjectively, I have never met a banker or an accountant who has ever
heard of rounding exactly 5 to an even rounded number. In fairness, must
admit that I am not aware of having met a person who programed old mainframe
banking systems, but I would expect that they had to conform to standard
accounting practice.
....

According to the European Commission document "The Introduction of the Euro
and the Rounding of Currency Amounts"
( http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/y2keuro/docs/ep22-en.pdf )

"Rounding has so far not been at the forefront of public interest and has
rarely been the subject of formal rules laid down in legislation; economic
operators have themselves dealt with the issue. A large variety of market
conventions and national practices exist, laying down rounding rules for
different national and international financial markets."

From this, I presume that "banker's rounding", may well have been used in
banking somewhere at some time, but likely was never the standard for banking
calculations that the name would imply.

The earliest reference that I have been able to nail down is the 1906 4th
edition of Robert Woodward's "Probability & Theory of Errors" where a
statement on p.42 suggests that rounding ties to an even rounded number was
standard practice in the preparation of mathematical tables. I would be very
interested in other pre-1940 references.

Jerry