What is the layman's term for "floating point number"?
What is the layman's term for "floating point number"?
I want to display an error message like "Value must be a floating point number between 5 and 10." Is "floating point number" the term that an English speaking person without a programming background would understand?
I want to display an error message like "Value must be a floating point number between 5 and 10." Is "floating point number" the term that an English speaking person without a programming background would understand?
I'd /guess/ many "people" would say "decimal number", meaning a "number" including a decimal point. However that is really wrong, of course. And i would be hard pressed guessing how many users will misinterpret the misinterpreted. I remember using the term "floating point number" (in our language) back in the MS-DOS days w/o problems but that was then and software was generally more specific (or the users were, whatever). The "floating" is not intuitive (sry that word is bad) because users that do not work with scientific/measure software do not know that the precision is a factor.
ReplyDeleteI'd go for "This field does not accept integers. Please supply a value including the decimal point" perhaps? Also i have seen and something used notation in the message (use the form nnn.nn). That almost always works for dates but numbers may be a bit trickier to understand.
But then i must ask. Since 55.000 almost equals 55, what is the big deal if a user omitts the floating point for a field? Normally (if the precision is fixed) the control's code would append ".000". No?
Dany Marmur with "must be a floating point number" I did not mean "must not be an integer" an integer would be fine here too.
ReplyDelete"Value must be a number between 5.00 and 10.00"
ReplyDeleteThomas Mueller, ah. Then i totally misunderstood your actual need.
ReplyDelete"Floating point" is a method to represent a "real number".
ReplyDeleteIf it's important for the user to know how are you storing reals in your app then you can specify this. If not I would say "Value must be a real number between 5 and 10".
See what both are on wikipedia.
I would say that the issue is the audience you wish to instruct. It is not so much the jargon as the awareness of mathematical concepts in the person reading. Your purpose may best be served by giving an instruction such as suggested by Gustav Schubert, which avoids jargon.
ReplyDeleteDecimal number between 5.0 and 10
ReplyDeleteIn Dutch you’d say “kommagetal”, which literally translates to “comma number”, which sounds really weird in English. :)
ReplyDeleteAs a hint to the user it might be useful to just give an example that contains a decimal separator. If they see “2.43” they’ll get it without further explanation.
real number?
ReplyDeleteWouter van Nifterick, swedish (being essentially german) has the concept of "decimaltal". Yes. But this is, i guess, just something that has become (widely?) used. It really should mean a number with the base 10. We cannot translate "idioms". So for "general/internation english" this will not do, IMHO.
ReplyDeleteWouter van Nifterick In English that would be "point number" then. (Doesn't exist either.)
ReplyDeleteI have now used the phrase "number between 5.00 and 10.00" which should get the meaning across.
For the message "'xxxx' is not a valid floating point value", I used "decimal number".
There really isn't a layman's term is there. Because lay people don't generally do that sort of maths.
ReplyDeleteBut in maths the correct term is real number. Floating point, fixed point, decimal, etc. are just different representations of real numbers.
Thomas Mueller I think it's an elegant solution.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear, short, readable, and even includes the range without getting unnecessarily mathematical on your users, like "{x∈ℝ∣5≤x<10}" or "ℝ[5,10)" :)
Rational number (rationeel getal)
ReplyDeleteIn Afrikaans we typically use "desimale getal" which translates to decimal number, most users understand that rather than real or float etc.
ReplyDelete@Mike Versteeg that is incorrect. Rational numbers (Q) are numbers that are ratios (=fractions of two integers).
ReplyDeleteYou probably meant "Reële getallen" (R) which is a superset of Q.
Since the input method we use is 10-based "decimal number" is easiest IMHO.
Arthur Hoornweg I don't see the difference between fp and rational, unless you're not talking numbers but the way of writing it out? I may not have understood your question..
ReplyDeleteMike Versteeg For example, pi is a real number but not a rational number (it cannot be written as a ratio).
ReplyDelete1/3 , however, is a rational number.
Both numbers are exact numbers, but they can only be approximated as a fp number.