Round 123,456 to the nearest hundred.

• A. 123,400
• B. 123,500
• C. 123,456
• D. 124,000

Answer: (B)

Rounding to the nearest hundred means you look at the tens place to decide whether to bump the hundreds digit up by one. If the tens digit is 5 or more, you increase the hundreds digit and make the last two digits zero; if it's less than 5, you keep the hundreds digit and set the last two digits to zero.

For 123,456, the hundreds place is in the 456 part, and the tens digit is 5. That means we round up the hundreds digit from 4 to 5 and turn the tens and ones into zeros. The result is 123,500.

123,400 would occur if the tens digit were 4 or less, so no up-rounding happens. 124,000 is rounding to the nearest thousand, which is not what rounding to the nearest hundred does.