CLEVELAND, Ohio – On a mid-October day, Mr. John Whelan is playing a video on rounding numbers for his class. As the video finishes and Mr. Whelan begins the lesson, Zoey expresses her worries ...

When rounding to the nearest 1,000, numbers with 500 in the hundreds column are rounded up to the next thousand. For example, 1,500 would round up to 2,000. Numbers below 500 are rounded down.

A method taught in school for rounding numbers doesn’t work well for certain uses, including in machine learning. Now, a different way of rounding is making a “resurgence,” researchers say.