What is the collective name for the digits before and after decimal point?
Asked
Active
Viewed 1,584 times
2
-
1Integer and fractional parts. – user Apr 11 '20 at 23:18
-
1I have heard of both "integer part" as well as "integral part" for the part to the left of the decimal point. – Andrew Chin Apr 11 '20 at 23:22
2 Answers
2
The part before the decimal point, the whole number $120$ in your example, is often referred to as the Characteristic and can be seen here https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Characteristic.html. The part after the decimal point, the fractional part $590$ in your example, can be referred to as the Mantissa. More information on this can be found here https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Mantissa.html.
Hope this helps!

swolo
- 342
-
1Wolfram Mathworld has a number of nonstandard definitions, but these are also mentioned on Wikipedia and I've seen at least "mantissa" in use elsewhere (I believe in discussions of Benford's Law). – Mark S. Apr 12 '20 at 02:08
-2
It's called the Number of Significant Figures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

Lysistrata
- 227
-
-
In this example, all of $120.590$ are significant figures, but that is not how the different parts of this number are called. The question is asking about the names of the different collections of digits. – swolo Apr 11 '20 at 23:17