At the performances last month, a total of seven-hundred and forty-four thousand, eight hundred and one drinks were sold at the theatre's restaurant bar. The manager wants to know how many drinks were sold, rounded to the nearest thousand drinks.

for an MCQ 11+ (or warm-up 13+ Maths) paper, possible answer options: a) 750,000   b) 744, 000   c) 744, 800   d) 745, 000   e) 700, 000 So, the actual number in figures is: 744, 801 We work that out first because then we can decide what the question is asking us to do with this number. Whenever dealing with large numbers, break it down bit by bit. We know that we need hundreds of thousands, because the question says 'seven hundred and forty-four thousand'. So, we know that we will have six digits in our number: 100 000 as we have 100 lots of 1000 (100 x 1000 = 100,000) Then complete by using the numbers given, reading the question carefully. seven hundred and forty-four = 744 eight hundred and one = 801 so 744,801 is our number. Now, the manager wants to know this number, rounded to the nearest thousand (1,000). We know that 1000 is 4 digits long, so we need to focus on the '(forty-)four thousand' part of the question. 744 801 We know from Maths lessons that if the number is 1-4, we round down to the nearest 10 multiple, and if the number is 5 or over, we round up to the nearest 10 multiple. And when rounding, we must look to the next digit down to determine what will happen with the bigger digits to the left hand side. So with our number... we look at 744 801. The 801 tells us that this is closer to the next nearest thousand above it (5000) than the one below it (4000). So we round UP! Therefore, our answer was d) 745, 000 because we have chosen to round up to the next thousand from 4000 to 5000 (We can go through why the other options a, b, c and e were incorrect if needed).