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truncate

 
Dictionary: trun·cate   (trŭng'kāt') pronunciation
tr.v., -cat·ed, -cat·ing, -cates.
  1. To shorten by or as if by cutting off. See synonyms at shorten.
  2. To shorten (a number) by dropping one or more digits after the decimal point.
  3. To replace (the edge of a crystal) with a plane face.
adj.
  1. Appearing to terminate abruptly, as a leaf of a tulip tree or a coiled gastropod shell that lacks a spire.
  2. Truncated.

[Latin truncāre, truncāt-, from truncus, trunk.]

truncately trun'cate'ly adv.
truncation trun·ca'tion n.

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To cut off leading or trailing digits or characters from an item of data without regard to the accuracy of the remaining characters. Truncation occurs when data are converted into a new record with smaller field lengths than the original.

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Banking Dictionary: Truncation
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1. Banking service in which cancelled checks or drafts are held by the customer's bank, or by another bank in the check collection system, and are not returned to the check writer with the Account Statement. Checks can be truncated, or stopped, at the bank where a check is first deposited, or by a Federal Reserve Bank. If done by a bank for its own customer, it is known as Check Safekeeping. The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (known informally as the Check 21 Law) allows replacement of actual checks with digital check images to improve the overall efficiency of the U.S. Check-clearing system. The handling of actual checks is stopped, or truncated, at the depositing financial institution. With the new law, a bank on the West Coast can transmit an electronic check image to the East Coast, where a substitute check is created and presented to the paying bank; the check clearing process is thus shortened from days to hours. A substitute check is the legal equivalent of the original paper check and contains the phrase "This is a LEGAL COPY of your check. You can use it the same way you would use the original check."

2. Dropping one or more digits in calculating interest accrued on savings accounts. For example, 1.677754 truncated after the fourth decimal becomes 1.6777. The opposite is Rounding.

Thesaurus: truncate
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verb

    To decrease, as in length or amount, by or as if by severing or excising: chop1, clip1, crop, cut, cut back, cut down, lop1, lower2, pare, prune, shear, slash, trim. See increase/decrease.

Antonyms: truncate
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v

Definition: shorten
Antonyms: elongate, expand, lengthen, stretch


Literary Dictionary: truncation
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truncation, the shortening of a metrical verse line by omitting a syllable or syllables (usually unstressed) from the full complement expected in the regular metrical pattern. This may occur at the beginning of the line (acephalexis: see acephalous) or, more usually, at the end (catalexis: see catalectic). In English verse, truncation is most often found in trochaic verse (see trochee), where the final unstressed syllable is commonly not employed.

Veterinary Dictionary: truncate
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1. to amputate; to deprive of limbs.
2. having the end cut squarely off.

Wikipedia: Truncation
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In mathematics, truncation is the term for limiting the number of digits right of the decimal point, by discarding the least significant ones.

For example, consider the real numbers

5.6341432543653654
32.438191288
-6.3444444444444

To truncate these numbers to 4 decimal digits, we only consider the 4 digits to the right of the decimal point.

The result would be:

5.6341
32.4381
-6.3444

Note that in some cases, truncating would yield the same result as rounding, but truncation does not round up or round down the digits; it merely cuts off at the specified digit. The truncation error can be twice the maximum error in rounding.

Truncation and floor function

Truncation of positive real numbers can be done using the floor function. Given a number x \in \mathbb{R}_+ to be truncated and n \in \mathbb{N}_0, the number of elements to be kept behind the decimal point, the truncated value of x is

\mbox{trunc} \left(x,n \right) = \frac{\lfloor 10^n \cdot x \rfloor}{10^n}.

However, for negative numbers truncation does not round in the same direction as the floor function: truncation always rounds toward zero, the floor function rounds towards negative infinity.

See also

External links


Translations: Truncate
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Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - afskære, afkorte, forkorte, lemlæste
adj. - afkortet, forkortet, afskåret

Nederlands (Dutch)
knotten, verminken

Français (French)
v. tr. - tronquer, écourter, (Comput, Math) tronquer
adj. - tronqué, écourté, (Comput, Math) tronqué

Deutsch (German)
v. - stutzen, kürzen
adj. - gestutzt, abgestumpft

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - κολοβώνω, κουτσουρεύω, περικόπτω
adj. - κολοβωμένος, κόλουρος

Italiano (Italian)
troncare, tronco

Português (Portuguese)
v. - truncar, mutilar
adj. - truncado (m)

Русский (Russian)
усекать, отсекать, обрезать, отсеченный, отрезанный

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - truncar
adj. - truncado

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - stympa, skära (hugga, klippa) av (bort), korta av, stubba (bildl.), trunkera (data)
adj. - stympad, trubbig

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
切去头端, 截棱成平面, 缩短, 截短的, 平头的, 平截的

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 切去頭端, 截棱成平面, 縮短
adj. - 截短的, 平頭的, 平截的

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 꼭대기를 자르다, 잘라 줄이다
adj. - 끝 잘린 꼴의, (고둥의) 첨정이 없는

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 頭を切って短くする, 切り詰める
adj. - 切形の, 省略された

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يقلم, يبتر (صفه) أقطع مربع ألطرف أو عريضه, أبتر‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮קטם, קיצץ‬
adj. - ‮מסתיים באופן פתאומי‬


Best of the Web: truncate
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Some good "truncate" pages on the web:


Math
mathworld.wolfram.com
 
 
 
Learn More
frontate
aegithognathous (vertebrate zoology)
round off (mathematics)

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