The “4” is in the “ones” place. The first WHOLE NUMBERS place holdings.
To the right of the decimal you start to have your Parts of A whole “1” or whole number which are basically a fraction or pieces of a whole (1). Therefor those place holdings are called tenths, hundredths, thousandths, ten thousandths, hundred thousandths, etc.
4 and 88 hundredths or 4.88. I like to look at decimals like money. You have 88 cents. Not quite a 1 dollar so you only have part of a whole dollar. So you have 4 whole dollars and only 88 cents or 88 cents out of 100 which would make 88 hundredths or the number is telling you that there are 4 whole numbers and 88 out of a hundred pieces of a whole or 4 and 88/100. So it’s 12 hundredths from making one whole. So now let’s look at the problem.
They are asking to round the tenths which we know is the first number to the right of the decimal. So when are rounding, you underline the place holder that you are going to either up, down or have it stay the same. After you underline the place holder that we are rounding and in this case that’s the first 8, the number to the right of the number you are rounding determines what you do to the place holding you want to round.
In this case you leave the four alone because it’s not it the right of the place holder we will be rounding. So I underline the first 8 after the decimal and the look at the second 8. If the number you are looking at that is next to the number you are rounding is “five or more add one more” “four or less let it rest” or leave the number alone or the same. 8 is five or more so add one more to the 8 we are rounding so you have 4.9 or four and nine tenths which is one more than 8 tenths is was just at at the beginning of the problem.
