Curious Omission In New-Style Formats

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com>:

> The significand of -3.14159 is the sequence of digits 314159. The
> mantissa of -3.14159 is the number 0.85841.

Fight it all you want. However:

   In American English, the original word for [significand] seems to
   have been mantissa (Burks[1] et al.), and this usage remains common
   in computing and among computer scientists.
   <URL:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significand#Use_of_.22mantissa.22>


   This digit string is referred to as the significand, mantissa, or
   coefficient.
   <URL:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Floating-point_numbers>

and, FWIW:

   Liukulukuun kuuluu neljä osaa: etumerkki (s), mantissa (m), kantaluku
   (k) ja eksponentti (c). [...]

      x = (−1)^s mk^c.

   <URL: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liukuluku>


Marko