Property asking prices to rise by 59%......

"Daytona" wrote

Possibly even nearly 64%!

How? Are there 55 weeks in your year?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Hehe - 0.94999%pw could be rounded and shown as 0.9%pw.

If that were the case here, then the annualised growth is actually more like 63.7%. Rounded to the nearest whole %, that's 64%!

At that rate i'll be a billionaire much quicker than I thought. :-)

OK, I'll see your 5%, and raise you another 9%.

The article referred to in the OP seems to derive the 0.9% figure out of thin air, noting that prices are about 0.1% up on two months ago, there having been 0.8% fall inbetween.

The data given claim a rise by £2048 to £196,319, which is actually more like 1.05%, annualising to nearly 73%.

Oh what fun it is to lie with statistics.

"Tim" wrote

Nitpick: 0.94999 rounds to 0.95 which usually rounds up, i.e. to 1.0.

0.94444% would work though.

"John Redman" wrote

Nitpick back: 0.94999 rounded to one decimal place *is* 0.9 and certainly *not* 1.0 !!

Counter-nitpick: IIRC one rounds from right to left, so 0.94999 resolves to

0.95 which would round up.

I just tried this in Excel and 0.94999 displayed to one place is 0.9 whereas

0.95 directly entered as such displays as 1.0.

I guess you don't RC, then.

No. Rounding incrementally is not permitted. You can't round to 2 places and then to 1, if you want to go to 1 you have to go straight there from the original number.

The whole point of rounding is to ensure the number you round

*to* is as close to the original number as possible. Clearly 0.3 is closer to 0.346 than 0.4 is, yet by your method 0.346 would round to 0.35 and then 0.4, which is wrong.

Well, there you go then.