Final answer:
The statement is FALSE; a positive number in the ROUND function specifies the number of decimal places to round to, not the position to the right of the decimal. Rounding in arithmetic operations follows specific rules for decimal places and significant figures.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that a positive number in the ROUND function indicates that numeric data should be rounded to the indicated position to the right of the decimal point is FALSE. When using the ROUND function, a positive number is actually used to specify the number of decimal places to the right of the decimal point to which the numeric data should be rounded. To illustrate, ROUND (123.98765, 2) would round the number 123.98765 to two decimal places, resulting in 123.99.
When rounding numeric data in addition or subtraction, the resulting value should retain the same number of decimal places as the number with the least decimal places among the original numbers. For example, 13.2 + 12.252 = 25.452 would be rounded to 25.5, maintaining one decimal place. In contrast, in multiplication and division, the answer should retain the same number of significant figures as the number with the fewest significant figures in the calculation. For example, 1.35 x 2.1 = 2.835 rounds to 2.8, following the rule of least significant figures.
It is important to note the significant rules about rounding: any trailing zeros in a number with a decimal point are significant regardless of their position. Moreover, rounding off is generally done by increasing the last retained digit by one if the following digit is 5 or more, and leaving it unchanged if the next digit is less than 5.