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Increment floating point numbers with the precision of the input with Java

I am looking for the most optimized and easy to read version of incrementing a floating point number with its own precision:
increment(1000) should return 1001
increment(100.1) should return 100.2
increment(0.1) should return 0.2
increment(0.01) should return 0.02
increment(0.001) should return 0.002
increment(0.0009) should return 0.0010
increment(0.000123) should return 0.000124
increment(increment(0.0009)) should return 0.002
It could be done by string operation but I don't want to convert this to string and parse it back to double.
I have done the following with String operations:
public static double incrementWithMover(double value){
DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat("0", DecimalFormatSymbols.getInstance(Locale.ENGLISH));
df.setMaximumFractionDigits(340); //340 = DecimalFormat.DOUBLE_FRACTION_DIGITS
String valueString = df.format(value);
String[] splitted = valueString.split("\\.");
StringBuilder mover = new StringBuilder();
if(splitted.length == 2){ // Floating Decimals
int precision = splitted[1].length();
df.setMaximumFractionDigits(precision);
mover = new StringBuilder("0.");
for(int i =1; i<precision; i++){
mover.append("0");
}
mover.append("1");
}
else{ // Non Floating Decimals
mover = new StringBuilder("1");
}
double incremented = Double.parseDouble(valueString) + Double.parseDouble(mover.toString());
return Double.parseDouble(df.format(incremented));
}
I am trying to write this method due to I am checking different values and trying to increment all the values in their own precision by one
What could be the best way to write such incrementFloating method?

This may work for you. Changed from doubles to strings.
String[] vals = { "1000","1000.1", ".1", ".01", ".001", ".00123", ".0004" };
for (String v : vals) {
System.out.printf("%s -> %s%n", v, incrementFloating(v));
}
prints
1000 -> 1001
1000.1 -> 1000.2
.1 -> 0.2
.01 -> 0.02
.001 -> 0.002
.00123 -> 0.00124
.0004 -> 0.0005
The method declaration
public static String incrementFloating(String v) {
BigDecimal b = new BigDecimal(v);
BigDecimal increment =
BigDecimal.valueOf(1).scaleByPowerOfTen(-b.scale());
return b.add(increment).stripTrailingZeros().toString();
}

Increment floating point numbers with the precision of the input with Java
This just isn't how it works.
Floats and Doubles aren't stored like you evidently think they are.
Imagine the whole number line. from negative infinity to positive infinity.
This line has an infinite number of integer values on it. Between any 2 integer values, and infinite number of values exist there, too.
Computers aren't magic. Floats are 32-bit, doubles are 64-bit. A 32-bit, by basic math, can only differentiate at most 2^32 numbers, that's about 4 billion.
4 billion is way, way less than 2 orders of infinity.
So how does that work then? Well, there are about 4 billion numbers that are 'blessed'. These numbers are representable by float, and no other numbers are. 0.3, for example, is not blessed. 0.3 is simply not a number in the float numeric system. It doesn't exist.
So, how do I explain that float x = 0.3; works, or what happens when you run float x = 0.1 + 0.2;?
Well, float and double operations convert, silently, to the nearest blessed number.
The distribution of blessed numbers is based on binary (so in decimal they don't make any particular sense), and aren't equally distributed. Near 1.0 there are way more than near 100.0, for example.
That means errors sneak in everywhere. The operation you describe fundamentally doesn't make sense here. You can't do what you want with floats or doubles. Period.
Go with Strings, or go with BigDecimal.
If you're interested, here you go:
BigDecimal bd = new BigDecimal(0.3);
System.out.println(bd);
> 0.299999999999999988897769753748434595763683319091796875
I didn't make that up. Write that code and run it. What is that ungodly number?
That's the nearest blessed number to 0.3.
So, in double number systems, applying your algorithm, increment(0.3) would try to calculate 0.299999999999999988897769753748434595763683319091796876, which isn't blessed, and the nearest blessed number to that is simply 0.299999999999999988897769753748434595763683319091796875 again, and the operation would do nothing.
Makes no sense.
Strings or BigDecimal, it is the only way. Efficiency is in that sense out the window, but unless you intent to run this op a few million times a second, you won't notice.

java removing trailing decimal digits causing .0 become .99

I want to simply have a function that converts a double with as many decimal places into 4 decimal places without rounding.
I have this code that has been working fine but found a random instance where it turned .0 into .99
Here are some sample outputs
4.12897456 ->4.1289
4.5 ->4.5
4.5231->4.5231
5.53->5.53
5.52->5.199 (Wrong conversion, I want it to be 5.52)
private static double get4Donly(double val){
double converted = ((long)(val * 1e4)) / 1e4;
return converted
}
EDIT: This conversion is called thousands of times, so please suggest a method where I dont have to create a new string all the time.

You can use DecimalFormat
import java.text.DecimalFormat;
import java.math.RoundingMode;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class MyClass {
public static void main(String args[]) {
DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat("#.####");
df.setRoundingMode(RoundingMode.DOWN);
for (Number n : Arrays.asList(4.12897456, 4.5, 4.5231, 5.53, 5.52)) {
Double d = n.doubleValue();
System.out.println(df.format(d));
}
}
}
RoundingMode.DOWN rounds towards zero, new DecimalFormat("#.####") creates a DecimalFormat instance that formats numbers to a maximum of 4 decimal places. Put those two together and the above code produces the following output, which I believe matches your expectations:
4.1289
4.5
4.5231
5.53
5.52

Doubles just don't work like you think they do.
They are stored in a binary form, not a decimal form. Just like '1 divided by 3' is not representable in a decimal double (0.3333333333 is not enough, it's infinite 3s, so not representable, so you get a rounding error), but '1 divided by 5' is representable just fine, there are numbers that are representable, and numbers that end up rounded when storing things in a double type, but crucially things that seem perfectly roundable in decimal may not be roundable in binary.
Given that they don't match up, your idea of 'eh, I will multiply by 4, turn it to a long, then convert back to a double, then divide by 1000' is not going to let those digits go through unmolested. This is not how you round things, as you're introducing additional loss in addition to the loss you already started out with due to using doubles.
You have 3 solutions available:
Just print it properly
A double cannot be considered to 'have 4 digits after the decimal separator' because a double isn't decimal.
Therefore, it doesn't even make sense to say: Please round this double to at most 4 fractional digits.
That is the crucial realisation. Once you understand that you'll be well along the way :)
What you CAN do is 'please take this double and print it by using no more than 4 digits after the decimal separator'.
String out = String.format("%.4f", 5.52);
or you can use System.printf(XXX) which is short for System.print(String.format(XXX)).
This is probably what you want
forget doubles entirely
For some domains its better to ditch doubles and switch to longs or ints. For example, if you're doing finances, it's better to store the atomic unit as per that currency in a long, and forego doubles instead. So, for dollars, store cents-in-a-long. For euros, the same. For bitcoin, store satoshis. Write custom rendering to render back in a form that is palatable for that currency:
long value = 450; // $4.50
String formatCurrency(long cents) {
return String.format("%s%s%d.%02d", cents < 0 ? "-" : " ", "$", Math.abs(cents) / 100, Math.abs(cents) % 100);
}
Use BigDecimal
This is generally more trouble than it is worth, but it stores every digit, decimally - it represent everything decimal notation can (and it also cannot represent anything else - 1 divided by 3 is impossible in BigDecimal).

I would recommend using the .substring() method by converting the double to a String. It is much easier to understand and achieve since you do not require the number to be rounded.
Moreover, it is the most simple out of all the other methods, such as using DecimalFormat
In that case, you could do it like so:
private static double get4Donly(double val){
String num = String.valueOf(val);
return Double.parseDouble(num.substring(0, 6));
}
However, if the length of the result is smaller than 6 characters, you can do:
private static double get4Donly(double val){
String num = String.valueOf(val);
if(num.length()>6) {
return Double.parseDouble(num.substring(0, 6));
}else {
return val;
}
}

Math in Java when precision is lost

The below algorithm works to identify a factor of a small number but fails completely when using a large one such as 7534534523.0
double result = 7; // 7534534523.0;
double divisor = 1;
for (int i = 2; i < result; i++){
double r = result / (double)i;
if (Math.floor(r) == r){
divisor = i;
break;
}
}
System.out.println(result + "/" + divisor + "=" + (result/divisor));
The number 7534534523.0 divided by 2 on a calculator can give a decimal part or round it (losing the 0.5). How can I perform such a check on large numbers? Do I have to use BigDecimal for this? Or is there another way?

If your goal is to represent a number with exactly n significant figures to the right of the decimal, BigDecimal is the class to use.
Immutable, arbitrary-precision signed decimal numbers. A BigDecimal consists of an arbitrary precision integer unscaled value and a 32-bit integer scale. If zero or positive, the scale is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point. If negative, the unscaled value of the number is multiplied by ten to the power of the negation of the scale. The value of the number represented by the BigDecimal is therefore (unscaledValue × 10-scale).
Additionally, you can have a better control over scale manipulation, rounding and format conversion.

I don't see what the problem is in your code. It works exactly like it should.
When I run your code I get this output:
7.534534523E9/77359.0=97397.0
That may have confused you, but its perfectly fine. It's just using scientific notation, but there is nothing wrong with that.
7.534534523E9 = 7.534534523 * 109 = 7,534,534,523
If you want to see it in normal notation, you can use System.out.format to print the result:
System.out.format("%.0f/%.0f=%.0f\n", result, divisor, result / divisor);
Shows:
7534534523/77359=97397
But you don't need double or BigDecimal to check if a number is divisible by another number. You can use the modulo operator on integral types to check if one number is divisible by another. As long as your numbers fit in a long, this works, otherwise you can move on to a BigInteger:
long result = 7534534523L;
long divisor = 1;
for (int i = 2; i < result; i++) {
if (result % i == 0) {
divisor = i;
break;
}
}
System.out.println(result + "/" + divisor + "=" + (result / divisor));

BigDecimal is the way to move ahead for preserving high precision in numbers.
DO NOT do not use constructor BigDecimal(double val) as the rounding is performed and the output is not always same. The same is mentioned in the implementation as well. According to it:
The results of this constructor can be somewhat unpredictable. One might assume that writing new BigDecimal(0.1) in Java creates a BigDecimal which is exactly equal to 0.1 (an unscaled value of 1, with a scale of 1), but it is actually equal to 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625. This is because 0.1 cannot be represented exactly as a double (or, for that matter, as a binary fraction of any finite length). Thus, the value that is being passed in to the constructor is not exactly equal to 0.1, appearances notwithstanding.
ALWAYS try to use constructor BigDecimal(String val) as it preserves precision and gives same output each time.

double inaccuracy [duplicate]

public class doublePrecision {
public static void main(String[] args) {
double total = 0;
total += 5.6;
total += 5.8;
System.out.println(total);
}
}
The above code prints:
11.399999999999
How would I get this to just print (or be able to use it as) 11.4?

As others have mentioned, you'll probably want to use the BigDecimal class, if you want to have an exact representation of 11.4.
Now, a little explanation into why this is happening:
The float and double primitive types in Java are floating point numbers, where the number is stored as a binary representation of a fraction and a exponent.
More specifically, a double-precision floating point value such as the double type is a 64-bit value, where:
1 bit denotes the sign (positive or negative).
11 bits for the exponent.
52 bits for the significant digits (the fractional part as a binary).
These parts are combined to produce a double representation of a value.
(Source: Wikipedia: Double precision)
For a detailed description of how floating point values are handled in Java, see the Section 4.2.3: Floating-Point Types, Formats, and Values of the Java Language Specification.
The byte, char, int, long types are fixed-point numbers, which are exact representions of numbers. Unlike fixed point numbers, floating point numbers will some times (safe to assume "most of the time") not be able to return an exact representation of a number. This is the reason why you end up with 11.399999999999 as the result of 5.6 + 5.8.
When requiring a value that is exact, such as 1.5 or 150.1005, you'll want to use one of the fixed-point types, which will be able to represent the number exactly.
As has been mentioned several times already, Java has a BigDecimal class which will handle very large numbers and very small numbers.
From the Java API Reference for the BigDecimal class:
Immutable,
arbitrary-precision signed decimal
numbers. A BigDecimal consists of an
arbitrary precision integer unscaled
value and a 32-bit integer scale. If
zero or positive, the scale is the
number of digits to the right of the
decimal point. If negative, the
unscaled value of the number is
multiplied by ten to the power of the
negation of the scale. The value of
the number represented by the
BigDecimal is therefore (unscaledValue
× 10^-scale).
There has been many questions on Stack Overflow relating to the matter of floating point numbers and its precision. Here is a list of related questions that may be of interest:
Why do I see a double variable initialized to some value like 21.4 as 21.399999618530273?
How to print really big numbers in C++
How is floating point stored? When does it matter?
Use Float or Decimal for Accounting Application Dollar Amount?
If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty details of floating point numbers, take a look at What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic.

When you input a double number, for example, 33.33333333333333, the value you get is actually the closest representable double-precision value, which is exactly:
33.3333333333333285963817615993320941925048828125
Dividing that by 100 gives:
0.333333333333333285963817615993320941925048828125
which also isn't representable as a double-precision number, so again it is rounded to the nearest representable value, which is exactly:
0.3333333333333332593184650249895639717578887939453125
When you print this value out, it gets rounded yet again to 17 decimal digits, giving:
0.33333333333333326

If you just want to process values as fractions, you can create a Fraction class which holds a numerator and denominator field.
Write methods for add, subtract, multiply and divide as well as a toDouble method. This way you can avoid floats during calculations.
EDIT: Quick implementation,
public class Fraction {
private int numerator;
private int denominator;
public Fraction(int n, int d){
numerator = n;
denominator = d;
}
public double toDouble(){
return ((double)numerator)/((double)denominator);
}
public static Fraction add(Fraction a, Fraction b){
if(a.denominator != b.denominator){
double aTop = b.denominator * a.numerator;
double bTop = a.denominator * b.numerator;
return new Fraction(aTop + bTop, a.denominator * b.denominator);
}
else{
return new Fraction(a.numerator + b.numerator, a.denominator);
}
}
public static Fraction divide(Fraction a, Fraction b){
return new Fraction(a.numerator * b.denominator, a.denominator * b.numerator);
}
public static Fraction multiply(Fraction a, Fraction b){
return new Fraction(a.numerator * b.numerator, a.denominator * b.denominator);
}
public static Fraction subtract(Fraction a, Fraction b){
if(a.denominator != b.denominator){
double aTop = b.denominator * a.numerator;
double bTop = a.denominator * b.numerator;
return new Fraction(aTop-bTop, a.denominator*b.denominator);
}
else{
return new Fraction(a.numerator - b.numerator, a.denominator);
}
}
}

Observe that you'd have the same problem if you used limited-precision decimal arithmetic, and wanted to deal with 1/3: 0.333333333 * 3 is 0.999999999, not 1.00000000.
Unfortunately, 5.6, 5.8 and 11.4 just aren't round numbers in binary, because they involve fifths. So the float representation of them isn't exact, just as 0.3333 isn't exactly 1/3.
If all the numbers you use are non-recurring decimals, and you want exact results, use BigDecimal. Or as others have said, if your values are like money in the sense that they're all a multiple of 0.01, or 0.001, or something, then multiply everything by a fixed power of 10 and use int or long (addition and subtraction are trivial: watch out for multiplication).
However, if you are happy with binary for the calculation, but you just want to print things out in a slightly friendlier format, try java.util.Formatter or String.format. In the format string specify a precision less than the full precision of a double. To 10 significant figures, say, 11.399999999999 is 11.4, so the result will be almost as accurate and more human-readable in cases where the binary result is very close to a value requiring only a few decimal places.
The precision to specify depends a bit on how much maths you've done with your numbers - in general the more you do, the more error will accumulate, but some algorithms accumulate it much faster than others (they're called "unstable" as opposed to "stable" with respect to rounding errors). If all you're doing is adding a few values, then I'd guess that dropping just one decimal place of precision will sort things out. Experiment.

You may want to look into using java's java.math.BigDecimal class if you really need precision math. Here is a good article from Oracle/Sun on the case for BigDecimal. While you can never represent 1/3 as someone mentioned, you can have the power to decide exactly how precise you want the result to be. setScale() is your friend.. :)
Ok, because I have way too much time on my hands at the moment here is a code example that relates to your question:
import java.math.BigDecimal;
/**
* Created by a wonderful programmer known as:
* Vincent Stoessel
* xaymaca#gmail.com
* on Mar 17, 2010 at 11:05:16 PM
*/
public class BigUp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
BigDecimal first, second, result ;
first = new BigDecimal("33.33333333333333") ;
second = new BigDecimal("100") ;
result = first.divide(second);
System.out.println("result is " + result);
//will print : result is 0.3333333333333333
}
}
and to plug my new favorite language, Groovy, here is a neater example of the same thing:
import java.math.BigDecimal
def first = new BigDecimal("33.33333333333333")
def second = new BigDecimal("100")
println "result is " + first/second // will print: result is 0.33333333333333

Pretty sure you could've made that into a three line example. :)
If you want exact precision, use BigDecimal. Otherwise, you can use ints multiplied by 10 ^ whatever precision you want.

As others have noted, not all decimal values can be represented as binary since decimal is based on powers of 10 and binary is based on powers of two.
If precision matters, use BigDecimal, but if you just want friendly output:
System.out.printf("%.2f\n", total);
Will give you:
11.40

You're running up against the precision limitation of type double.
Java.Math has some arbitrary-precision arithmetic facilities.

You can't, because 7.3 doesn't have a finite representation in binary. The closest you can get is 2054767329987789/2**48 = 7.3+1/1407374883553280.
Take a look at http://docs.python.org/tutorial/floatingpoint.html for a further explanation. (It's on the Python website, but Java and C++ have the same "problem".)
The solution depends on what exactly your problem is:
If it's that you just don't like seeing all those noise digits, then fix your string formatting. Don't display more than 15 significant digits (or 7 for float).
If it's that the inexactness of your numbers is breaking things like "if" statements, then you should write if (abs(x - 7.3) < TOLERANCE) instead of if (x == 7.3).
If you're working with money, then what you probably really want is decimal fixed point. Store an integer number of cents or whatever the smallest unit of your currency is.
(VERY UNLIKELY) If you need more than 53 significant bits (15-16 significant digits) of precision, then use a high-precision floating-point type, like BigDecimal.

private void getRound() {
// this is very simple and interesting
double a = 5, b = 3, c;
c = a / b;
System.out.println(" round val is " + c);
// round val is : 1.6666666666666667
// if you want to only two precision point with double we
// can use formate option in String
// which takes 2 parameters one is formte specifier which
// shows dicimal places another double value
String s = String.format("%.2f", c);
double val = Double.parseDouble(s);
System.out.println(" val is :" + val);
// now out put will be : val is :1.67
}

Use java.math.BigDecimal
Doubles are binary fractions internally, so they sometimes cannot represent decimal fractions to the exact decimal.

/*
0.8 1.2
0.7 1.3
0.7000000000000002 2.3
0.7999999999999998 4.2
*/
double adjust = fToInt + 1.0 - orgV;
// The following two lines works for me.
String s = String.format("%.2f", adjust);
double val = Double.parseDouble(s);
System.out.println(val); // output: 0.8, 0.7, 0.7, 0.8

Doubles are approximations of the decimal numbers in your Java source. You're seeing the consequence of the mismatch between the double (which is a binary-coded value) and your source (which is decimal-coded).
Java's producing the closest binary approximation. You can use the java.text.DecimalFormat to display a better-looking decimal value.

Short answer: Always use BigDecimal and make sure you are using the constructor with String argument, not the double one.
Back to your example, the following code will print 11.4, as you wish.
public class doublePrecision {
public static void main(String[] args) {
BigDecimal total = new BigDecimal("0");
total = total.add(new BigDecimal("5.6"));
total = total.add(new BigDecimal("5.8"));
System.out.println(total);
}
}

Multiply everything by 100 and store it in a long as cents.

Computers store numbers in binary and can't actually represent numbers such as 33.333333333 or 100.0 exactly. This is one of the tricky things about using doubles. You will have to just round the answer before showing it to a user. Luckily in most applications, you don't need that many decimal places anyhow.

Floating point numbers differ from real numbers in that for any given floating point number there is a next higher floating point number. Same as integers. There's no integer between 1 and 2.
There's no way to represent 1/3 as a float. There's a float below it and there's a float above it, and there's a certain distance between them. And 1/3 is in that space.
Apfloat for Java claims to work with arbitrary precision floating point numbers, but I've never used it. Probably worth a look.
http://www.apfloat.org/apfloat_java/
A similar question was asked here before
Java floating point high precision library

Use a BigDecimal. It even lets you specify rounding rules (like ROUND_HALF_EVEN, which will minimize statistical error by rounding to the even neighbor if both are the same distance; i.e. both 1.5 and 2.5 round to 2).

Why not use the round() method from Math class?
// The number of 0s determines how many digits you want after the floating point
// (here one digit)
total = (double)Math.round(total * 10) / 10;
System.out.println(total); // prints 11.4

Check out BigDecimal, it handles problems dealing with floating point arithmetic like that.
The new call would look like this:
term[number].coefficient.add(co);
Use setScale() to set the number of decimal place precision to be used.

If you have no choice other than using double values, can use the below code.
public static double sumDouble(double value1, double value2) {
double sum = 0.0;
String value1Str = Double.toString(value1);
int decimalIndex = value1Str.indexOf(".");
int value1Precision = 0;
if (decimalIndex != -1) {
value1Precision = (value1Str.length() - 1) - decimalIndex;
}
String value2Str = Double.toString(value2);
decimalIndex = value2Str.indexOf(".");
int value2Precision = 0;
if (decimalIndex != -1) {
value2Precision = (value2Str.length() - 1) - decimalIndex;
}
int maxPrecision = value1Precision > value2Precision ? value1Precision : value2Precision;
sum = value1 + value2;
String s = String.format("%." + maxPrecision + "f", sum);
sum = Double.parseDouble(s);
return sum;
}

You can Do the Following!
System.out.println(String.format("%.12f", total));
if you change the decimal value here %.12f

So far I understand it as main goal to get correct double from wrong double.
Look for my solution how to get correct value from "approximate" wrong value - if it is real floating point it rounds last digit - counted from all digits - counting before dot and try to keep max possible digits after dot - hope that it is enough precision for most cases:
public static double roundError(double value) {
BigDecimal valueBigDecimal = new BigDecimal(Double.toString(value));
String valueString = valueBigDecimal.toPlainString();
if (!valueString.contains(".")) return value;
String[] valueArray = valueString.split("[.]");
int places = 16;
places -= valueArray[0].length();
if ("56789".contains("" + valueArray[0].charAt(valueArray[0].length() - 1))) places--;
//System.out.println("Rounding " + value + "(" + valueString + ") to " + places + " places");
return valueBigDecimal.setScale(places, RoundingMode.HALF_UP).doubleValue();
}
I know it is long code, sure not best, maybe someone can fix it to be more elegant. Anyway it is working, see examples:
roundError(5.6+5.8) = 11.399999999999999 = 11.4
roundError(0.4-0.3) = 0.10000000000000003 = 0.1
roundError(37235.137567000005) = 37235.137567
roundError(1/3) 0.3333333333333333 = 0.333333333333333
roundError(3723513756.7000005) = 3.7235137567E9 (3723513756.7)
roundError(3723513756123.7000005) = 3.7235137561237E12 (3723513756123.7)
roundError(372351375612.7000005) = 3.723513756127E11 (372351375612.7)
roundError(1.7976931348623157) = 1.797693134862316

Do not waste your efford using BigDecimal. In 99.99999% cases you don't need it. java double type is of cource approximate but in almost all cases, it is sufficiently precise. Mind that your have an error at 14th significant digit. This is really negligible!
To get nice output use:
System.out.printf("%.2f\n", total);

Issue in rounding a float to a precision

I am writing a function round:
static float round(float number, precision){}
The function should work like this: round(12.3456f, 3) = 12.345
My definition of function is like this:
public static float round(float value, int precision) {
float result;
if(precision <= 0){
throw new RuntimeException("Precision can not be zero or less");
}
int number = (int) power(10,precision);
value = value * number;
result = (float)Math.round(value)/number;
return result;
}
But the issue is that, my unit test case for this function doesn't pass,
public void mathTestNew() {
assertEquals("MathTest",12.341,OOTBFunctions.round(12.3416f,3));
}
The result is
junit.framework.AssertionFailedError: MathTest expected:<12.341> but was:<12.342>
I am not sure how to overcome this error. I am not sure if BigDecimal will help me in this.

Rounding normally occurs towards the nearest integer. So 12.3416 is correctly rounded to 12.342
If you want the rounding behaviour you seem to be asking for (where the number is rounded down towards negative infinity) then you should use Math.floor(x) instead of Math.round(x)
Also be careful with rounding floats / doubles as they both suffer from numerical inaccuracy. If you really want high accuracy on decimal places, you may be better using BigDecimal instead.

Math.round is "round-to-nearest". You probably want Math.floor.

If you did want to use BigDecimal:
public static float round(float value, int precision) {
if (precision <= 0) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Precision cannot be zero or less.");
}
BigDecimal decimal = BigDecimal.valueOf(value);
return decimal.setScale(precision, RoundingMode.FLOOR).floatValue();
}
You may lose accuracy when converting from BigDecimal to float, so if accuracy is a must, do not convert; keep the value as a BigDecimal.
As mentioned in other answers, float is an approximation of a base 10 number. The following demonstrates just that:
System.out.println(BigDecimal.valueOf(12.3416f)); // outputs 12.34160041809082
System.out.println(new BigDecimal("12.3416")); // outputs 12.3416

12.3416 rounded is 12.342. There in lies your problem. You probably want Math.Floor instead. I would recomend against constantly multiplying as that can ruin the number. However, by 10 does not lower precision.

You can't write such a method. Floating point doesn't have decimal places, it has binary places. Ergo you cannot round to a specified number of decimal places. If you want decimmal places you must use a decimal radix, i.e. BigDecimal, or DecimalFormat. Apart from the error in expectation noted by #ColeJohnson, code like you have written will fail in over 90% of cases.