How to round to the nearest hundredth

Imagine you’re working on your monthly budget and need to organize your expenses to make sense of your finances. As you dive into the figures, you come across a few numbers with long decimal places, and it strikes you that they seem cumbersome to deal with. You wonder how to round these values to the nearest hundredth, making your budget easier to read and manage. This scenario raises a common question that many face when handling finances, academic work, or even everyday calculations.

To round to the nearest hundredth, look at the digit in the thousandths place (the third digit to the right of the decimal point). If this digit is 5 or greater, increase the digit in the hundredths place (the second digit to the right of the decimal point) by one. If the thousandths digit is less than 5, keep the hundredths digit the same, and drop all digits to the right.

To elaborate further, rounding is a way to simplify a number while maintaining its overall significance. When rounding a number to the nearest hundredth, you focus on two decimal places to the right of the decimal point. For example, if you have the number 14.567, you identify the hundredths place (which is 6) and the thousandths place (which is 7). Here, since 7 is greater than 5, you round the 6 up to 7, making the rounded number 14.57. Conversely, if the number were 14.564, the 4 in the thousandths place indicates you should keep the 6 the same, resulting in 14.56. This method of rounding applies universally, whether you’re balancing a checkbook or calculating scientific measurements, making it a fundamental skill in mathematics and everyday life.