Curious Omission In New-Style Formats
Ian Kelly
ian.g.kelly at gmail.com
Thu Jul 14 13:10:44 EDT 2016
On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 10:02 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> 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>
Just because it's already common to use the wrong term doesn't mean
the usage should be promulgated further.
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