Table of Contents

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.

The following screenshot shows how to round the value 934745 to 1 significant figure:

Significant figures in Google Sheets

We can see that the value 934745 gets rounded to 900000:

Google Sheets significant figures

Note that we can round to however many significant figures we’d like:

Rounding to significant figures in Google Sheets

For a wonderful introduction to significant figures, check out the video below from Kahn Academy:

How do I round to Significant Figures in Google Sheets?

Requst a