The two lines above are the same length. The top line is split into pieces and the bottom line is split into pieces.

and are equivalent because they occupy the same position on the number line.

When we round a number to the hundreds place we look to our tens place to tell us if we round up or down. If the number in our tens place is or greater, we round up. If the number in the tens place is or less, we round down. When we round up, the number in the hundreds place increases by and all the other numbers become . When we round down, the number in the hundreds place stays the same and all the other numbers become .

In this case, is equal to so our rounded number is

We can create a fraction model to help us solve the problem. The fraction models below show and

is greater than , or is less than , because more of the model is filled in.