Final answer:
By rounding up the number of finishers to the nearest thousand, you would have ordered 43,000 medals for the NYC Marathon, ensuring that every one of the 42,429 finishers received one.
Step-by-step explanation:
If you were in charge of ordering medals for the 2010 New York City Marathon and needed to make a rounded estimate of how many to order, you would most likely round up the number of participants to ensure there were enough medals. Since 42,429 people finished the race, a typical rounding method might be to round this number to the nearest thousand, which would give you 43,000. This is a common practice in event planning to account for unexpected participants and to avoid the risk of running out of medals. Therefore, if you rounded up to 43,000 medals, you would have ordered enough medals for all the finishers of the marathon.