text: is 5/16 less than or greater than 0.313?   5/16 equals 0.3125.  it's less than 0.313 unless .313 is a rounded off number.  it's considered acceptable to round off a decimal in this fashion.  when to round up rounding up means that we increase the terminating digit by a value of 1 and drop off the digits to the right. if the next place beyond where we are terminating the decimal is greater than or equal to five, we round up. for example, if we round 5.47 to the tenths place, it can be can be rounded up to 5.5.  when to round down if the number to the right of our terminating decimal place is four or less (4, 3, 2, 1, 0), we round down. this is done by leaving our last decimal place as it is given and discarding all digits to its right. for example, if we round 6.734 to the hundredths place, it can be rounded down to 6.73.