For rounding, what does it mean to round each number to the greatest place of the least number?

Question

I‘m trying to help my 5th grader do math and the teacher says go to the book for help and the book says round each number to the greatest place of the least number.

1. 4284+979+5610 I would say that is 4280+980+5610. That’s how I read into it but what I want to put is 4300+900+5600

Answer 1

Rebbeca is on the right track, but there is some more to get to the correct result

the numbers

4284

979

5610

the smallest number ? 979.

Now, "round to the greatest place of the least number"

what is the greatest (nonzero) place of the least number ? hundreds place

so round all numbers to their hundreds place

let' do that now

4284 --> 4300

979 1000 --> (am I wrong on this one ? )

5610 --> 5610

Answer 2

Hi, Kevin.

 

Okay, what I think they're saying is to round to the greatest place value of the smallest number. For number one, the smallest number is 979 and the greatest place value for that is the hundreds place, so you would round all the numbers to the hundreds place. However, 979 doesn't round to 900, it should round to 1000 so that doesn't make sense.