Rounding to 1 Decimal Place

Starter of The Day Transum Mathematics Topics

Topics: Starter | Approximation | Arithmetic | Rounding

Mr. MacLeod's Grade 7 Class, St. Stephens Catholic School- Valleyview Alberta
My Grade 7 class would like to be able to use a calculator to save time on this question, but they did enjoy it.
Transum,
Even the most confident pupils might hesitate when you ask them to round -37.25 to one decimal place. Do you know the answer? Are you sure? Have a look at the extension activity below then let us know what you think.

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Previous Day | This starter is for 20 February | Next Day

Answers

Pom 31.4

Gosh 997.8

Snod 3.5

Niggle 5.2

Bodgit 33.8

Lip 3686.0

Soop 9.0

Flirt 1.5

Didums 0.0

Dilly-Dally 778.0

5546.2

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

Note to teacher: Doing this activity once with a class helps students develop strategies. It is only when they do this activity a second time that they will have the opportunity to practise those strategies. That is when the learning is consolidated. Click the button above to regenerate another version of this starter from random numbers.

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.

So, for example, 37.25 becomes 37.2, 37.15 also becomes 37.2 and −37.25 becomes −37.2 without any doubt.

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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	Teacher, do your students have access to computers? Do they have iPads or Laptops in Lessons? Whether your students each have a TabletPC, a Surface or a Mac, this activity lends itself to eLearning (Engaged Learning).

Here a concise URL for a version of this page without the comments.

Transum.org/go/?Start=February20

Here is the URL which will take them to a related student activity.

Transum.org/go/?to=roundingdp

Curriculum Reference

See the National Curriculum page for links to related online activities and resources.