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

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

#171

Post by civil_engineer »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #71
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #60

Shoot. I thought "Proportion" was the One True Correct word, but it's not. Float values between 0 and 1 are very very useful, and I use them all over the place, and I actually thought everyone did (and everyone called them 'Proportions') Unlike percentages, you can just multiply them with the number you want the 'proportion' of, Quick, how do you calculate 20% of 50% of 12345!? (it's (20/100) * (50/100) * 12345) Ok,…

It makes most sense in formulas: Instead of x=(foo/100) * (bar/100) * baz you can do x=foo * bar * baz. Which is rather more readable! Probabilities in statistics are also expressed in this manner. Meanwhile I found out that the Dutch dictionary actually has Perunage for this usage, especially in finance. So maybe that's he term I'll start using?

This the right answer! permyriad -> per 1000. percent -> per 100. perunage -> per 1. I now have another way to impress/irritate my peers!

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

#172

Post by eps »

j-pb wrote: post #75

As the logic dealing with {0, 1} is named after its founder George Boole, a boolean or bool for short. I'd suggest we call a fuzzy truth value in the interval of [0,1] after its founder Lotfi A. Zadeh, a zadehan or zade for short. Edit: Fixed Bool to Boole thanks to globular-toast, my internal syntax checker must have auto corrected that one ;)

"Zad" means "rear" or "behind" in slavic languages and it's closely related to "butt" and "ass". So the appeal of your suggestion, as clever as it is, is definitely not universal :)

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

#175

Post by pc86 »

rocqua wrote: post #139
Sandman wrote: post #90

I don't think this is a naming issue at all. In the provided example, 'Accuracy' is the correct name for the parameter, as that's what the parameter represents, accuracy. The fact that accuracy should be given as a value in an interval from 0 to 1 should be a property of parameter type . In other words, the parameter should not be a float, but a more constrained type that allows floats only in [0,1]. EDIT: Some of yo…

Great that you like typed languages, and ones that allow for such constrained/dependent typing as well. It seems disingenuous to me to suggest that anyone using other languages do not have this problem. And really, there are quite a few languages to not have this form of typing, and even some reasons for a language to not want this form of typing. So please, don't answer a question by saying "your questions is wrong"…

Equally condescending is saying "It's great that you like X, but I don't so I'm going to ignore the broader point of your argument."

The point remains that the fact a given parameter's valid values are [0,1] is not a function of it's name. You can check the values within the method and enter various error states depending on the exact business rules.

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

#176

Post by MagnumOpus »

smitty1e wrote: post #22

"Normalized". That's what we call data that have been scaled to fit on a tidy axis.

That isn't the right term. The standard meaning of "normalisation" in most scientific and engineering domains is shifting and scaling to get the sample mean to 0 and sample standard deviation to 1. I.e. it will almost always include both negative numbers and numbers larger than 1.

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

#177

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

jb1991 wrote: post #121
Sandman wrote: post #90

I don't think this is a naming issue at all. In the provided example, 'Accuracy' is the correct name for the parameter, as that's what the parameter represents, accuracy. The fact that accuracy should be given as a value in an interval from 0 to 1 should be a property of parameter type . In other words, the parameter should not be a float, but a more constrained type that allows floats only in [0,1]. EDIT: Some of yo…

While true, if your language doesn’t support such a type, then the burden for such a name goes to the parameter, does it not?

> While true, if your language doesn’t support such a type

You'd be surprised where the support is. In C#, you would declare a struct type with one read only field of type double, and range validation (x this is the "value object" pattern. http://wiki.c2.com/?ValueObject

Yes there's a bit of boilerplate - especially since you might want to override equality, cast operators etc. But there is support. And with a struct, not much overhead to it.

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

#178

Post by vertere »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #60

Shoot. I thought "Proportion" was the One True Correct word, but it's not. Float values between 0 and 1 are very very useful, and I use them all over the place, and I actually thought everyone did (and everyone called them 'Proportions') Unlike percentages, you can just multiply them with the number you want the 'proportion' of, Quick, how do you calculate 20% of 50% of 12345!? (it's (20/100) * (50/100) * 12345) Ok,…

I too am surprised "proportion" was not the obvious answer.

Here's another recent HN/Twitter discussion [0] that surprised me and made me think a lot of programmers haven't done much numerical programming.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24223033

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

#179

Post by mannykannot »

aristophenes wrote: post #143
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #60

Shoot. I thought "Proportion" was the One True Correct word, but it's not. Float values between 0 and 1 are very very useful, and I use them all over the place, and I actually thought everyone did (and everyone called them 'Proportions') Unlike percentages, you can just multiply them with the number you want the 'proportion' of, Quick, how do you calculate 20% of 50% of 12345!? (it's (20/100) * (50/100) * 12345) Ok,…

One of the answers was edited to “portion”, which is the same idea, I think either portion or proportion is elegant and simple. If anyone has been using proportion then I’d stick with that, though portion is nice and succinct.

In general usage, 'proportion' is not limited to the unit interval [1][2]. Offhand, however, I cannot think of a use of 'portion' that does not refer to part of a whole [3]. I think this is the best suggestion so far.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/proportion

[2]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proportion (3rd. entry)

[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/portion

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

#180

Post by vertere »

smitty1e wrote: post #22

"Normalized". That's what we call data that have been scaled to fit on a tidy axis.

I don't think "normalised" is specific enough. Normalising can refer to division by values other than the maximum. I'm also not convinced it implies non-negativity.

(My vote's with "proportion" BTW.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_(statistics)

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