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NancyLebovitz comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong
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I'd be much more comfortable answering the probability sections if I knew what epsilon is. I usually say 0% when the value is less than 0.5% and 100% when the value is greater than 99.5%, rounding to the nearest whole percentage, on the grounds that the whole point of using percentages is to avoid explicit fractions (common or decimal). But then you ruin this by explicitly mentioning 0.5% and 99.99% as possible answers. If you had put a hard limit on the number of digits allowed, then I could have used that. In the end, since I saw no consistent guidance, I fell back on my usual practice. The result is that I had a lot of 0s and 100s; hopefully that won't mess up your algorithms.
ETA: It is probably relevant here that I am a naturally lazy person.
Epsilon is a minuscule amount. It's vanishingly small, but it's still there.
Yes, but which minuscule amount?
To be more specific: If ϵ ≥ 5 × 10⁻ⁿ (which it must be for some n, if it is a positive real number), then I only need to figure out my probability to n + 1 digits. Upon doing so, if it's all 0s, then my probability is no more than ϵ, so I can enter 0. Otherwise, I should enter something larger. (And a similar thing holds on the other end.) Specifying ϵ serves the practical purpose of telling us how much work to put into estimating our probabilities. Since I had no guideline for that, I chose to default to ϵ = 1/2 (in percentage points), rather than try to additionally work out how small ϵ was supposed to be.
If, instead of bringing up ϵ, the survey had instructed us to use as many decimals as we need to avoid ever answering either 0 or 100, then I probably would have done more work. (There are reasons why this is bad, since the results will be increasingly unreliable, but still it could have said that.) But since I knew that at some point my work would be ignored, I didn't do any.
(Edits: minor grammar and precise phrasing of inequalities.)
I took epsilon to be simply 0.5, on the basis of "the survey can take decimals but I'm going to use whole numbers as suggested, so 0 means I rounded down anything less than 0.5". This is imprecise but gives me greater confidence in my answers, and (as you say), I have some tendency towards laziness.
Yes, that's what I did too (0.5%).