Jason Marshall wrote: >> But SA rounds that rule score to 1.7 to save display space. Most SA rules >> actually have scores with 3 decimal places. (ie: 1.268) > >> The "real" answer would be to always display 3-decimal place scores, >> but that's rather of ugly and creates a cluttered report. However, >> you'd always be 100% accurate. > > I'm sure I'm not the first one to suggest this, but why NOT always > display the numbers in their entirety?
As stated above: "That's rather ugly and creates a cluttered report". > > Would it really make things more cluttered to add two digits to each number > in the report? Yes, and it's unnecessary. Life is full of round-number issues. Learning to accept rounding is unavoidable. People like rounded numbers because they are fast and easy to read. Nearly every number you see in life is rounded. You've just never checked the background math before. Take Signposts along roads. Have you never checked those signs telling you how far away a city is against your odometer? Sometimes you'll pass one sign saying 70km, then another saying 60km, but your odometer will show less than (or more than) 10km between the two signs.. Do you call the highway dept and complain they can't measure? Do you complain to the auto-maker that your odometer should only show 10km increments? No, because we all intuitively know that the numbers are rounded. We all know that a measurement 10.5 really means "something near, but not exactly 10.5" Why should SA be so different? Why do you expect numbers the to add exactly down to the last decimal place? > Or how about making the actual scores accurate to two decimal places, and > display those in their entirety -- meeting both sides of the argument 1/2 > way? *8-) That would be reasonable, however you'd have to re-code the perceptron to generate scores that way. That said, I still think the shorter report is more readable and elegant.
