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I have 35% of something, but when I calculate how much that is I multiply the total by 0.35

Is there a unambiguous word for the decimal form of a percent? "Decimal" is too broad because it can refer to any number with a fractional component. "Fraction" suggests the format 35/100.

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    $\begingroup$ I like "proportion" $\endgroup$
    – Ben Grossmann
    Jul 6, 2015 at 5:31
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    $\begingroup$ I'm writing a program with a "ranged" class, which is basically a value confined to a range. "proportion" is a perfect name for the function that returns the current value divided by the highest possible value. $\endgroup$
    – gunfulker
    Jul 6, 2015 at 5:48
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    $\begingroup$ "proportion" is totally misleading: it has already a precise definition in mathematics, which is not what we are talking about here. $\endgroup$
    – Luca Fagioli
    Jul 17, 2021 at 9:32
  • $\begingroup$ Years late to the party, but "fraction", while it may suggest the format "35/100" (as years of schooling has drilled into us), is really just "not a whole number" and can certainly refer to "0.35". (I'm building out a formula database table and was looking up a column name that would obviously apply to 0.35 and not 35 in context. If a user entered 35/100 it would either error - because it's not a floating point integer - or the app will convert it before storing it. Either way "fraction" will be obvious to a developer using the database.) $\endgroup$
    – Phil Tune
    Apr 28, 2022 at 15:00

5 Answers 5

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I am partial to what Omnomnomnom mentioned in a comment: it is a proportion, and the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary supports this terminology (snippet produced below):

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    $\begingroup$ To be especially specific, one could say 'unit proportion'? $\endgroup$
    – dnv
    Mar 7, 2019 at 16:16
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I don't know that there is a single word to express what you want to say. It's a "percentage as a decimal" or as Thanasis Mattis said "percentage in its decimal form". You could go with "Decimal Percentage" but that's not officially defined as an actual word. You could also use "Decimal Fraction" which represents a fraction as a decimal but not necessarily a percentage (See definition below).

As mentioned by Thanasis Mattas a percentage is a portion but a portion isn't a percentage. Thus, I wouldn't use "proportion".

"Decimal Fraction" as defined by Meriam Webster : a fraction (such as .25 = ²⁵/₁₀₀ or .025 = ²⁵/₁₀₀₀) or mixed number (such as 3.025 = 3²⁵/₁₀₀₀) in which the denominator is a power of 10 usually expressed by use of the decimal point

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5 years later...
While proportion is a good choice, it is not correct. Percentage in its decimal form is a proportion but a proportion is not necessarily a decimal formated percentage. It can be 0.25, 25%, 25/100 or 1/4 or whatever else that describes a proportion. Same goes with other similar words, such as index or ratio. Unfortunately, I could not find a single word that explicitly means "percentage in its decimal form", so one has to choose one of those and move on, or use a descriptive/compound name.

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If we look at the decimal $0.35$ and want a word to describe "$0.35$ of a number", we should notice that it would be convenient to describe it as a ratio, say $\frac{35}{100}$. That is, we have $35$ parts of a hundred. We can rephrase this as $35$ parts per hundred, and then use some Latin and get fancy to call this $35$ parts per centum. This is a bit too wordy, so I would propose that we shorten this even further to "$35$ per-cent".

Tldr: The word "percent" itself was invented to describe (almost) exactly what you want.

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    $\begingroup$ As you can probably tell from the question itself I'm aware of "percent" and what it means. It turns out that only humans convert them to percents and the decimal part is what's only ever used which is why its particularly important to refer to is separately. $\endgroup$
    – gunfulker
    Jul 6, 2015 at 6:20
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Since a formal definition for that does not exist, I propose the locution percent decimal.

Example

hitRate is the percentage expressed as percent decimal.

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