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Lesson 59: Place Value to Billions and More Practice Rounding
In this easy lesson, we'll extend our place value chart all the way up to billions, and we'll get some more practice rounding.
Don't forget to watch the embedded video clip for this lesson at the bottom of the page. Please be sure to read the embedded video information and disclaimer.
Study and memorize this extended place value chart.
| Billions | Hundred Millions | Ten Millions | Millions | Hundred Thousands | Ten Thou-sands | Thou-sands | Hund-reds | Tens | Ones |
| 1,000,000,000 | 100,000,000 | 10,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 100,000 | 10,000 | 1,000 | 100 | 10 | 1 |
Just like we've seen before, as we move to the left, each place value is multiplied by 10. You can also see that we put a comma in between every three digits as shown, to make numbers easier to read. It's very important that you be able to recognize all of these numbers, and understand their value.
Some students think that billions are just a meaningless concept, but billions come up quite a bit. Government budgets (or deficits) are measured in billions, as is population, and distances over space. It's important to understand how these numbers work.
Let's get some practice rounding. Round the number 5,864,901,372 to the nearest hundred million. The 8 is in the hundred millions place. To round to that place, we must look at the digit to the right, which is a 6. Since it is 5 or above, we will round up. We get 5,900,000,000. By using this method, you will be able to round to any place value.
I like this joke about very large numbers: A person says to his friend, "Scientists say that the sun will burn out in 15 billion years." The friend nervously says, "You said 15 billion, right?" The person then reassures him that he did in fact say 15 billion. The relieved friend then says, "Oh my goodness, for a moment there I thought you said 15 million."
There will be more practice in later lessons. Until then, memorize the place value chart.
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