Euro Calculators

["Monte C. Smith" <montecs@xxxxxxxx>]

Anyone using a GUI euro calculator application might want to see this
article, at
http://advisor.gartner.com/n_inbox/hotcontent/hc_6091999_2.html

Here are some excerpts:
 
 Why Might a Euro Calculator Be Inaccurate?

 Reasons for inaccuracy in euro calculators include:

    Arithmetic precision. The default floating-point precision of some
programming
    languages is not adequate for intermediate conversion calculations,
or for the full
    range of likely financial values in all EU currencies. 
    Rounding. Some programming language services carry out implicit
rounding or
    truncation operations that may be inappropriate (e.g., when
converting numbers
    into strings). 
    Programming errors. Conversion rules, such as triangulation or the
    requirement to multiply by conversion factors rather than divide by
their
    reciprocals, may be implemented incorrectly. 

Also this:

Accuracy and quality. Although currency conversion seems a trivial task,
calculators
 developed by inexperienced programmers may be inaccurate for a number
of reasons
 (see Note 1). These are not theoretical risks. In an informal
comparison of a small
 number of calculators, one of the first two we downloaded did not give
correct results —
 converting FRF66.02 to EUR10.07 rather than EUR10.06. The source of
shareware
 may give users an incorrect impression of quality and reliability. The
faulty calculator
 noted above was obtained by following a link from the home page of a
leading online
 service (CompuServe).

Monte