A word for a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive)

Question

I'm a programmer. I'm so sick of writing documentation for things that should be explainable in a word.

When you write a function in a programming language, you get to name its parameters. Most things I can name easy enough, such as "Name" or "URL" or "MaxSizeN". The first 2 are self explanatory, the last one is the maximum size of something in relevant data units(as opposed to bytes or some other unit) but that one is easily understood by other programmers too.

Very often though, there is a parameter that is a floating point type (float) that needs an input in the range of 0 to 1 (inclusive). This is problematic since I have no idea what to call those things so I have to write function descriptors (assuming the language has them) or document it some other way which is annoying.

Lets say this float needs to define the accuracy of something so I declare it:

function FuncName(float Accuracy)

This is very ambiguous since the type float itself can contain a ridiculously large variety of numbers. Meanwhile if I were to declare it as such:

function FuncName(float AccuracyPercent)

Then its immediately obvious that the input should be a value from 0 to 100.

Percentages aren't useful for math however, they are more like a "human friendly" markup for fractions and have no place in actual program logic and I'd rather avoid unnecessary overhead.

I'm looking for a word that I could mangle into my parameter names so that they would convey "this should be from 0 to 1".

I don't even care if the word is unknown to most people, I'll just start using it and tell others to read the dictionary :D

Is there any word for that?

Answer 1

How about unit interval?

From Wikipedia:

In mathematics, the unit interval is the closed interval [0,1], that is, the set of all real numbers that are greater than or equal to 0 and less than or equal to 1. It is often denoted I (capital letter I). In addition to its role in real analysis, the unit interval is used to study homotopy theory in the field of topology.

In the literature, the term "unit interval" is sometimes applied to the other shapes that an interval from 0 to 1 could take: (0,1], [0,1), and (0,1). However, the notation I is most commonly reserved for the closed interval [0,1].

The word you're seeking may be UnitInterval:

function FuncName(float UnitInterval)

Note for other users: Many numbers in the unit interval are not fractions, i.e., rational numbers. They may be irrational numbers, e.g., pi/4 and the square root of 1/2, neither of which can be expressed as a ratio of two integers. At the same time, all numbers with a finite number of digits are rational numbers.

Acknowledgement: I changed my original UnitInt to UnitInterval based @ChrisH's comment. Thanks, Chris.

Answer 2

Proportion or primantissa, from generic to novel words. [I appreciate the primant shortening proposed by DeusXMachina]

"Proportion" is my first generic choice, especially in its "percent" acception (acceptation). Apparently, before the decimal system, fractions in the form of 1/100 were common. The "%" sign evolved from Italian "per cento", cento being contracted into two circles separated by a bar.

From chemistry, I would like to rejuvenate the term "stoichiometry" (from Greek words στοιχεῖον, stoicheion "element" and μέτρον, metron "measure"). From order statistics, with a twisted use, "fractile" could be easy to understand (usual derivatives are percentile, centile, quartile, quantile).

From computer-based representations, the term "mantissa" could be fine, alas its use is discouraged by many authorities (IEEE floating-point standard, D. Knuth). Mantissa is an interesting term (but the origin might seem obscure): it may denote: surplus, remainder, overdose, leftover. It was used to denote the fractional part of a base-10 logarithm: for 123.45, Log(123.45) = 2.09149109..., so the (integer) characteric is 2, and the (remainder) mantissa est 09149109... One may could be "significand", the significant digits of a number in scientific notation or a floating-point number.

Finally, I asked a friend with a huge knowledge in scientific terminology (author for instance of Le manuel du système international d'unités : lexique et conversions, in French only). He claims that one should invent new names for such concepts, and proposed a nice "primantissa" (or "primantisse in French).

Answer 3

In the 3D graphics programming world, values such as color components that are scaled to the range [0, 1] are referred to as normalized.

So you can use:

function FuncName(float AccuracyNormalized)

when you're expecting an argument in the range [0.0, 1.0].

Answer 4

Edit: I came back to this and lamented my original answer's failure to win people over. I thought it was a good answer. Then I set about thinking of more ideas. Coming up with one, I went to add an alternate answer, only to realize the question had been closed. I'll note it here, as it may be better than my original answer (below the cut) and perhaps it will be useful to someone who comes along in the future. If not, oh well.

portion

noun

1. A part of any whole

I think this is exactly what we're trying to describe. It's somewhere between none and all of a whole, inclusive. A portion is never more than all of the whole, and it's never less than none, so that fits with the "unit interval" theme, without being quite so awkward as literally saying "unit interval".

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Original answer:

It's not quite the specific word you're looking for, but if you want a word that a reader will intuit the way you want, you could reference a physical input like a dial or a slider. The mental image of a physical device may provide the caller with a much clearer idea of the parameter's usage.

That being said, words like "dial" and "slider" feel inelegant and might imply too great an association with UI elements/objects, rather than values.

In engineering terms, those inputs are potentiometers. I don't think you'd want to use such a long word as "potentiometer", but they do have a nice abbreviation for that class of inputs:

Pot

For example:

VolumePot
AccuracyPot
ContrastPot

It's a sufficiently distinctive and specific word that it would be unlikely to be mis-intuited. Either a person would know what it was and what it implied, or they would be forced to ask about it and learn the implications.

I've actually seen this used in the past, by the way. I'd forgotten about it until just now. I recall thinking it was quirky, but I did understand the meaning.

Answer 5

A unit ratio is a fraction with a denominator of 1. Not perfect, but it's what I use.

unit ratio

Alternatively, if we're looking for absolute precision:

unit interval ratio

Answer 6

My suggestion would be "fractional". While not perfect you didn't sound like you were going for perfection. It hints at the need for the float to be a fraction (a value between 0 and 1). The downside is it seems to exclude 0 and 1 but you can use your definitions to clear that up I'd imagine.

Answer 7

In your context how about PerUnit. The phrase "per unit x" is commonplace which gives a helpful layer of familiarity, though it's easily understood from the individual words. In "electrical engineering, a per-unit system is the expression of system quantities as fractions of a defined base unit quantity" (Wikipedia). While this may be a completely unrelated field to yours it has that fraction of something quality you're looking for.

Answer 8

In common English, I'd probably use decimal. I could imagine that could be confusing if you're using binary, octal, or hexadecimal numbers, though.

Answer 9

I used to have this same problem. I standardized on using "scalar". It's not perfect, but once I have explained it in one place in the code, its meaning is obvious elsewhere. One problem with this word is that by itself it doesn't imply the range 0 to 1, but I use it consistently to be 0 to 1 and never anything else so it works pretty well. I, too, would like a single (and preferably short) word that more accurately describes this range, but this works for me.

Answer 10

0 to 1 implies only 0.1, 0.2..0.9? or also 0.01, 0.02..0.99?

In any case I myself am a programmer and an SQL database administrator and I prefer to use the term "a scale of a number" which means "the number of digits to the right of the decimal point in a number."

In the first case you a have a scale of 1 whereas in the second case you have a scale of 2.

A "scale" is - a succession or progression of steps or degrees; graduated series; a sequence of marks either at regular intervals or else representing equal steps, used as a reference in making measurements;

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190476.aspx

In this case you get a range from 0 to 1 with a scale of [scale] (a step of [scale]).

It is easier to say Scale 0 to 1 (Scale -1 to 1 if with negative) if you want to imply tenth, hundredth, thousandths and e.t.c withing a range between 0 and 1 including 0 and 1.

Answer 11

I refer to numbers like that as "homogeneous components," but I work in games, and our terms are in the idiom of a very small circle.

Answer 12

Range0-1 would work as part of a parameter name, particularly as you are going to define the term anyway. If you are going to use it as a prefix or suffix you could even shorten it to rng0-1

As an alternative you could use domain0-1 or dom0-1 as the domain of a mathematical function is the range of input values over which it is defined.

Answer 13

I've just finished a year long programming project for university with this everywhere.

I went with:

percentNormalized

p.s. I like long descriptive variable names and methods, sometimes they can even lead to very nice self-commenting code.

(sometimes they can lead to lines being way to long though... espcially in conditionals)

Answer 14

There is a word that describes the values between and inclusive of 0 and 1 in my vocabulary, but there is evidence that its meaning varies depending on which part of the world you were educated in. So even though we are speaking of math, the answer to a linguistic question is subjective:

The word I would immediately assign to a function you defined is gradient in the meaning of a linear representation of a rate of change of a function, thus possible to express as a value from 0 to 1.

Equivalent to what Wikipedia defines as a Grade (slope). Gradient is listed as one of the alternative words and is explicitly differentiated as a subset of a more broad gradient in calculus. Unlike other synonyms, ie. slope, incline, pitch or rise, it does not have strong relation to a notion of a physical slope.