Python 3's way (called "round half to even" or "banker's rounding") is considered the standard rounding method these days, though some language implementations aren't on the bus yet.
The simple "always round 0.5 up" technique results in a slight bias toward the higher number. With large numbers of calculations, this can be significant. The Python 3 approach eliminates this issue.
There is more than one method of rounding in common use. IEEE 754, the international standard for floating-point math, defines five different rounding methods (the one used by Python 3 is the default). And there are others.
This behavior is not as widely known as it ought to be. AppleScript was, if I remember correctly, an early adopter of this rounding method. The round command in AppleScript offers several options, but round-toward-even is the default as it is in IEEE 754. Apparently the engineer who implemented the round command got so fed up with all the requests to "make it work like I learned in school" that he implemented just that: round 2.5 rounding as taught in school is a valid AppleScript command. :-)
Python 3's way (called "round half to even" or "banker's rounding") is considered the standard rounding method these days, though some language implementations aren't on the bus yet.
The simple "always round 0.5 up" technique results in a slight bias toward the higher number. With large numbers of calculations, this can be significant. The Python 3 approach eliminates this issue.
There is more than one method of rounding in common use. IEEE 754, the international standard for floating-point math, defines five different rounding methods (the one used by Python 3 is the default). And there are others.
This behavior is not as widely known as it ought to be. AppleScript was, if I remember correctly, an early adopter of this rounding method. The round command in AppleScript offers several options, but round-toward-even is the default as it is in IEEE 754. Apparently the engineer who implemented the round command got so fed up with all the requests to "make it work like I learned in school" that he implemented just that: round 2.5 rounding as taught in school is a valid AppleScript command. :-)
You can control the rounding you get in Py3000 using the Decimal module:
>>> decimal.Decimal('3.5').quantize(decimal.Decimal('1'),
rounding=decimal.ROUND_HALF_UP)
>>> Decimal('4')
>>> decimal.Decimal('2.5').quantize(decimal.Decimal('1'),
rounding=decimal.ROUND_HALF_EVEN)
>>> Decimal('2')
>>> decimal.Decimal('3.5').quantize(decimal.Decimal('1'),
rounding=decimal.ROUND_HALF_DOWN)
>>> Decimal('3')
Videos
What is the Python round function?
How to round numbers in pandas using Python round function?
How does Python round function handle 0.5 values?
The math.ceil (ceiling) function returns the smallest integer higher or equal to x.
For Python 3:
import math
print(math.ceil(4.2))
For Python 2:
import math
print(int(math.ceil(4.2)))
I know this answer is for a question from a while back, but if you don't want to import math and you just want to round up, this works for me.
>>> int(21 / 5)
4
>>> int(21 / 5) + (21 % 5 > 0)
5
The first part becomes 4 and the second part evaluates to "True" if there is a remainder, which in addition True = 1; False = 0. So if there is no remainder, then it stays the same integer, but if there is a remainder it adds 1.
round (0.5) = 0
round (1.5) = 2
round (2.5) = 2
round (3.5) = 4
Is it just me or does this feel like some sort of inconsistency? Why does 0.5 round to 0, when it should round to 1?
edit: it's because python uses https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IEEE_754#Rounding_rules
edit2: Surprised this got this much attention. Here's a code work-around someone made:
def col_round(x): frac = x - math.floor(x) if frac < 0.5: return math.floor(x) return math.ceil(x)