What are the numbers before and after the decimal point referred to in mathematics?

Question

Is there an actual term for the numbers that appear before and after the decimal point?

For example:

25.18

I know the 1 is in the tenths position, the 8 is in the hundredths position but I am seeking singular terms which apply to all of the numbers that appear both before and after the decimal point.

I am building a billing system, storing dollars and cents as integers (in separate columns), but for other currencies "dollars" and "cents" are not the correct terms.

Answer 1

There are two terminologies that I'm familiar with. Sometimes, the part to the right of the decimal (cents) is called the mantissa, and the part to the left (dollars, in your metaphor), is called the characteristic.

But I also like the generic terms integer-part and fractional-part. It's what I and those with whom I do research call them (who uses the word mantissa routinely? not me, but perhaps someone). Yes, I know the fractional part doesn't actually have to be a fraction, but that's just something I toss into my big bag of math vagaries.

Answer 2

We adopted the terms, 'characteristic' and 'mantissa' to label the numbers before and after decimal points from Euler. It is not known until Euler used these terms in describing the parts of logarithm in the 18th century.

But using these two terms seems not a good option for your billing system to represent numbers in various currencies.

Your options then:

1. integer_digit and fractional_digit - as suggested above.
2. whole_digit and decimal_digit - for positive numbers.
3. whole and decimal - keep it really short.
4. integer_digit and decimal_digit - including negative numbers.

I think it still makes sense to use 'whole' and 'decimal' terms since you are storing them per column in your billing system.