Question

I have some decimal data that I am pushing into a SharePoint list where it is to be viewed. I’d like to restrict the number of significant figures displayed in the result data based on my knowledge of the specific calculation. Sometimes it’ll be 3, so 12345 will become 12300 and 0.012345 will become 0.0123. Occasionally it will be 4 or 5. Is there any convenient way to handle this?

Answer 1

See: RoundToSignificantFigures by “P Daddy”.
I’ve combined his method with another one I liked.

Rounding to significant figures is a lot easier in TSQL where the rounding method is based on rounding position, not number of decimal places – which is the case with .Net math.round. You could round a number in TSQL to negative places, which would round at whole numbers – so the scaling isn’t needed.

Also see this other thread. Pyrolistical’s method is good.

The trailing zeros part of the problem seems like more of a string operation to me, so I included a ToString() extension method which will pad zeros if necessary.

using System;
using System.Globalization;

public static class Precision
{
    // 2^-24
    public const float FLOAT_EPSILON = 0.0000000596046448f;

    // 2^-53
    public const double DOUBLE_EPSILON = 0.00000000000000011102230246251565d;

    public static bool AlmostEquals(this double a, double b, double epsilon = DOUBLE_EPSILON)
    {
        // ReSharper disable CompareOfFloatsByEqualityOperator
        if (a == b)
        {
            return true;
        }
        // ReSharper restore CompareOfFloatsByEqualityOperator

        return (System.Math.Abs(a - b) < epsilon);
    }

    public static bool AlmostEquals(this float a, float b, float epsilon = FLOAT_EPSILON)
    {
        // ReSharper disable CompareOfFloatsByEqualityOperator
        if (a == b)
        {
            return true;
        }
        // ReSharper restore CompareOfFloatsByEqualityOperator

        return (System.Math.Abs(a - b) < epsilon);
    }
}

public static class SignificantDigits
{
    public static double Round(this double value, int significantDigits)
    {
        int unneededRoundingPosition;
        return RoundSignificantDigits(value, significantDigits, out unneededRoundingPosition);
    }

    public static string ToString(this double value, int significantDigits)
    {
        // this method will round and then append zeros if needed.
        // i.e. if you round .002 to two significant figures, the resulting number should be .0020.

        var currentInfo = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.NumberFormat;

        if (double.IsNaN(value))
        {
            return currentInfo.NaNSymbol;
        }

        if (double.IsPositiveInfinity(value))
        {
            return currentInfo.PositiveInfinitySymbol;
        }

        if (double.IsNegativeInfinity(value))
        {
            return currentInfo.NegativeInfinitySymbol;
        }

        int roundingPosition;
        var roundedValue = RoundSignificantDigits(value, significantDigits, out roundingPosition);

        // when rounding causes a cascading round affecting digits of greater significance, 
        // need to re-round to get a correct rounding position afterwards
        // this fixes a bug where rounding 9.96 to 2 figures yeilds 10.0 instead of 10
        RoundSignificantDigits(roundedValue, significantDigits, out roundingPosition);

        if (Math.Abs(roundingPosition) > 9)
        {
            // use exponential notation format
            // ReSharper disable FormatStringProblem
            return string.Format(currentInfo, "{0:E" + (significantDigits - 1) + "}", roundedValue);
            // ReSharper restore FormatStringProblem
        }

        // string.format is only needed with decimal numbers (whole numbers won't need to be padded with zeros to the right.)
        // ReSharper disable FormatStringProblem
        return roundingPosition > 0 ? string.Format(currentInfo, "{0:F" + roundingPosition + "}", roundedValue) : roundedValue.ToString(currentInfo);
        // ReSharper restore FormatStringProblem
    }

    private static double RoundSignificantDigits(double value, int significantDigits, out int roundingPosition)
    {
        // this method will return a rounded double value at a number of signifigant figures.
        // the sigFigures parameter must be between 0 and 15, exclusive.

        roundingPosition = 0;

        if (value.AlmostEquals(0d))
        {
            roundingPosition = significantDigits - 1;
            return 0d;
        }

        if (double.IsNaN(value))
        {
            return double.NaN;
        }

        if (double.IsPositiveInfinity(value))
        {
            return double.PositiveInfinity;
        }

        if (double.IsNegativeInfinity(value))
        {
            return double.NegativeInfinity;
        }

        if (significantDigits < 1 || significantDigits > 15)
        {
            throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("significantDigits", value, "The significantDigits argument must be between 1 and 15.");
        }

        // The resulting rounding position will be negative for rounding at whole numbers, and positive for decimal places.
        roundingPosition = significantDigits - 1 - (int)(Math.Floor(Math.Log10(Math.Abs(value))));

        // try to use a rounding position directly, if no scale is needed.
        // this is because the scale mutliplication after the rounding can introduce error, although 
        // this only happens when you're dealing with really tiny numbers, i.e 9.9e-14.
        if (roundingPosition > 0 && roundingPosition < 16)
        {
            return Math.Round(value, roundingPosition, MidpointRounding.AwayFromZero);
        }

        // Shouldn't get here unless we need to scale it.
        // Set the scaling value, for rounding whole numbers or decimals past 15 places
        var scale = Math.Pow(10, Math.Ceiling(Math.Log10(Math.Abs(value))));

        return Math.Round(value / scale, significantDigits, MidpointRounding.AwayFromZero) * scale;
    }
}