After an embarrassing teleconference in which I presented a series of percentages that did not sum to 100 (as they should have), I found some R code on stackoverflow.com to help me to avoid this in the future.
In general, the sum of rounded numbers (e.g., using the base::round function) is not the same as their rounded sum. For example:
> sum(c(0.333, 0.333, 0.334)) [1] 1 > sum(round(c(0.333, 0.333, 0.334), 2)) [1] 0.99
The stackoverflow solution applies the following algorithm
- Round down to the specified number of decimal places
- Order numbers by their remainder values
- Increment the specified decimal place of values with 'k' largest remainders, where 'k' is the number of values that must be incremented to preserve their rounded sum
Here's the corresponding R function:
round_preserve_sum <- function(x, digits = 0) { up <- 10 ^ digits x <- x * up y <- floor(x) indices <- tail(order(x-y), round(sum(x)) - sum(y)) y[indices] <- y[indices] + 1 y / up }
Continuing with the example:
> sum(c(0.333, 0.333, 0.334)) [1] 1 > sum(round(c(0.333, 0.333, 0.334), 2)) [1] 0.99 > sum(round_preserve_sum(c(0.333, 0.333, 0.334), 2)) [1] 1