When rounding a number to the ten thousand, look at the next column, the thousands.
4 * 10^4 dollars
Practice makes perfect
We want to round the amount of money that Taylor made to the nearest ten thousand. Then we will rewrite the number as a product of a single digit and a power of ten. Let's do it!
Rounding
We need to round the following value to the nearest ten thousand.
43 785
To do so, let's take a look at the digit in the column to the right, the thousands.
43 785
The number in the column is 3. Now, recall the rule for rounding.
If the number is 5 or more, round up.
If the number is 4 or less, round down.
This means we will be rounding down. Let's do that!
43 785 ≈ 40 000
Rewriting
Now we want to rewrite the following number as a product of a single digit and a power of ten.
40 000
For that, we will rewrite the number as its greatest place value times a power of 10. To find the exponent, we need to count the zeros in the number.
4 000
We see that there are 4 zeros in the number. Now, recall how the sign of the exponent changes for different numbers.
Numbers Greater Than 1
Numbers Less Than 1
positive (+)
negative (-)
Since the number is more than 1, the exponent is positive. This means that the exponent of 10 is 4. We now have everything we need to rewrite our number.
40 000= 4* 10^4
Taylor made about 4* 10^4 dollars last year.
