Rounding to the nearest whole number

A Mathematics Lesson Starter Of The Day

Pupils should be very familiar with the concept of rounding as they begin to study topics that provide ample opportunity to practice this skill. Mensuration of a circle, trigonometry and statistics spring to mind as well as topics in Science and Geography. When working on multi-step solutions to problems they should be shown the issues of rounding too early. Sometimes known as premature approximation, this practice will introduce unnecessary errors in the final answer.

Anon,

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Answers

1413

Would you have got the same answer if you had added all of the original numbers together then rounded off the answer?

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Extension

Do you know how to round negative numbers? If values exactly half way between get rounded up should -37.25 be rounded to -37.2 or -37.3? Does ‘rounded up’ mean rounded to the larger value or the value furthest away from zero?

A system of rounding commonly used in bookkeeping and some computing procedures is called ‘round half to even’. In this system half way values are rounded either up or down in order to make the last digit an even number.

This method of rounding is also useful when rounding values in large data sets as it evens out the rounding ups and rounding downs for the half way values.

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