>From my experience, the typical math app was written in Fortran because
COBOL wasn't nearly as good at math.
In any case, that rounding scheme wasn't thought up by the writers for the
Superman movie. That was a trick done in the late 70's and yes, it was
actually done. I think the guy got caught by a manual audit. <shrug>
On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Christopher Browne wrote:
> It is typical for that software to be written in COBOL or PL/I,
> where the operators round things appropriately behind the scenes,
> and it is reasonably certain that IBM PL/I compilers _don't_
> have "callbacks to analyze the rounding."
>
> The "stealing the pennies" idea was entertaining enough when
> presented by Richard Pryor in one of the worse of the Superman
> movies, but keep in mind that this _was_ a "bad Superman movie."
>
> But it just doesn't make sense for the Evil Bank to have some
> magical account around where they track the Extra Pennies. Reality
> is rather more mundane:
>
> When the amount of the interest payment was _supposed_ to be $4.3245,
> and they only paid you $4.32, they're not going to shunt 0.45 cents
> somewhere; what happens is that this diminishes their
> interest expense by that amount. They may have a report that will
> evaluate the effects of rounding on the account portfolio, but
> it makes NO sense for them to bother with the Very Silly Approach
> of accounting for this via:
>
> DR CR
> Interest Expense $4.3245
> Your Account $4.32
> Richard Pryor's Secret
> Rounding Account $0.0045
>
> That's just silly. They'll go with:
>
> DR CR
> Interest Expense $4.32
> Your Account $4.32
>
> > In the example I gave, the brokerage probably a bought a hundred
> > shares at 9 7/8 for $987.50, distributed 1 share to each person who
> > bought one, charged them $9.88 each, and pocketed the 50 cents
> > difference. Everyone's price was 9 7/8 (rounded to the nearest
> > relevant unit).
>
> They're not going to "pocket the difference;" for them to do that
> would involve an equivalent Silly Accounting For This.
>
> > It's not an "artifact of gnucash", it's an artifact of accounting. If
> > what you paid is different from the total price of the items you
> > bought, that money will end up in a third party's pocket, and it makes
> > sense to record that. In any case, it *has* to be accounted for, even
> > if the number that you're counting is smaller than 1.
>
> The thing that's the case in _ALL_ of these cases is that that little
> difference _ISN'T A SEPARATE BIT OF MONEY._
>
> It's not tracked separately, except in bad Superman movies. It is
> _VASTLY_ outweighed, for things like stocks, by the _BIG_ stuff like:
>
> a) The $50 in commissions on the trade, and
> b) The fact that the stock's price fluctuates from day to day.
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
> "And if you could lie on the floor without holding on, you weren't
> really drunk :-)" -- Preben Guldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
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>
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