Why does .NET use banker's rounding as default?

Question

According to the documentation, the decimal.Round method uses a round-to-even algorithm which is not common for most applications. So I always end up writing a custom functi

Answer 1

Decimals are mostly used for money; banker’s rounding is common when working with money. Or you could say.

It is mostly bankers that need the decimal type; therefore it does “banker’s rounding”

Bankers rounding have the advantage that on average you will get the same result if you:

• round a set of “invoice lines” before adding them up,
• or add them up then round the total

Rounding before adding up saved a lot of work in the days before computers.

(In the UK when we went decimal banks would not deal with half pence, but for many years there was still a half pence coin and shop often had prices ending in half pence – so lots of rounding)