Often you may want to round a value to a certain number of significant figures in Google Sheets.
You can use the following formula to do so:
=ROUND(value,figures-(1+INT(LOG10(ABS(value)))))
where value is the value that you want to round and figures is the number of significant figures to round to.
Here’s what the formula does in a nutshell:
1. ABS converts the value to a positive value.
2. LOG10 finds the exponent of the value.
3. INT removes the decimal from the value.
4. ROUND then finds the number of significant figures to round to.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Rounding to Significant Figures in Google Sheets
The following screenshot shows how to round the value 934745 to 1 significant figure:
We can see that the value 934745 gets rounded to 900000:
Note that we can round to however many significant figures we’d like:
You can find more Google Sheets tutorials here.
A Simple Explanation of Significant Figures
For a wonderful introduction to significant figures, check out the video below from Kahn Academy: