Lesson 3 – Rounding Whole Numbers to the Nearest 1,000

Objective:

At the end of this lesson, students should be able to round whole numbers to their nearest thousand.

Example 1

Round 4200 and 4600 to the nearest thousand.

Solution

4200 is nearer to 4000 than to 5000. Therefore we round down to 4000.

4600 is nearer to 5000 than to 4000. We round up to 5000.

Numbers from 4001 to 4499 get rounded down to 4000.

We round up numbers from 4500 to 4999 to 5000.

Example 2

Round 8989 to the nearest thousand.

Solution

8989 can be rounded to the nearest thousand.

The number in the hundreds place is 8 which is more than 5. We round 8 up by adding 1 to the number in the thousands place. The number in the thousands place becomes 9 and the numbers in the hundreds, tens and units place become zero.

=>   8989 to the nearest thousand is 9000.

Example 3

Round 4,258,311 to the nearest thousand

Solution

The figure (3) three is less than 5, so we ignore and put zeros in the remaining places.

4,258,311 ≈ 4,258,000 (to the nearest 1,000)

NOTE:

When rounding to the nearest 1,000, remember that half of a 1000 is 500. If the digits in the hundreds, tens and unit places make less than 500, the number rounds down to the previous 1,000. If the digits in the hundreds, tens and unit place make more than 500, the number rounds up to the next 1,000.