I've only started studying $3D$ geometry and hence came about octants.
I tried combining sources online, but there seems to be a lot of ambiguity.
- My maths book labels the coord axes; and numbers and names the octants in a certain order, the rules for which are not specified.
- WolframAlpha does not label octants at all.
The ambiguity further deepens because
Wikipedia says that "Octant ( + + + ) is sometimes referred to as the first octant, although similar ordinal name descriptors are not defined for the other seven octants" - which is in alignment with what WolframAlpha says - yet Wikipedia goes on to list names and numbers for all the octants (like my maths book did), without referencing a valid source as to where did it get that from.
There's even a mention of this ambiguity on the Talk page.
So, I basically want to know what exactly is the correct, authoritative numbering of octants?
Are all octants numbered and named OR is only the (+, +, +) called the first octant and are the rest ignored?
If your answer is the first part above, then please also state the correct numbering for the octants.
I know this is too trivial a problem but let's just fix it for once and for all!