When I was in college, a professor of Numerical Analysis told us that the way you describe for rounding numbers is the correct one. You shouldn't always round up the number (integer).5, because it is equally distant from the (integer) and the (integer + 1). In order to minimize the error of the sum (or the error of the average, or whatever), half of those situations should be rounded up and the other half should be rounded down. The R programmers seem to share the same opinion as my professor of Numerical Analysis...
