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When you measure in fractions of 100, you call it a percentage. When you measure in fractions of 1000, you call it promille or per mil. There are even words for fractions of 10000 or 100000.

But what do you call it when you measure in fractions of 1?

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    1/1 = 1, 2/1 = 2, 3/1 = 3... Where I'm from that's called counting. (^_^)
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Aug 6, 2011 at 14:34
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    As @RegD says, your 'fractions of 1' are just plain old numbers. The body of this question doesn't fit the title.
    – z7sg Ѫ
    Commented Aug 6, 2011 at 16:05
  • @Jasper Loy You are right. I completely misunderstood the question.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Aug 6, 2011 at 17:05
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    The original title (What do you call the scale [0..1]?) was much much clearer. I do not want to start an edit war... but I would suggest reverting to the first revision. Clearly the OP refers to the fact that 10%=0.1, 35%=0.35 etc
    – nico
    Commented Aug 6, 2011 at 18:02
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    @Jasper: it means (well, I interpret it as) decimal numbers between 0 and 1.
    – nico
    Commented Aug 7, 2011 at 6:26

3 Answers 3

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Answering here from the perspective of a physical scientist.

Such comparisons are often dimensionless (say change in length over initial length, which is length/length = 1), and when they are we often say "fractional".

As in "the strain is the fractional change in length", or "here we compare the factional signal loss between...".

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    Aren't percentages dimensionless as well? Still, thanks for the alternative! :)
    – wen
    Commented Aug 7, 2011 at 9:52
  • @Pepijn: Well, yes, but the are 1/100 (that is one per one hundred or "pre cent"), and as used by physicists "fraction" is taken to be normalized (to use prash's good suggestion).
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Aug 7, 2011 at 23:19
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If you rewrite a percentage in the interval [0;1] then you get a proportion or simply a decimal number.

This, always keeping in mind that, for instance 0.1 = 10% = 100‰ = 1000‱

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  • I feel that decimal number strongly implies (as it does) that you can go below 0.0 and beyond 1.0. However, proportion seems a decent alternative.
    – wen
    Commented Aug 7, 2011 at 9:57
  • @Pepijn: well, technically you can go beyond 1 (e.g. 200%=2) and below 0 (-50% = -0.5).
    – nico
    Commented Aug 7, 2011 at 16:50
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Depending on context, you can even use the word normalized. In fields that use statistical techniques, we use factors that change an arbitrary number into one that has the range [0,1]. Such factors are usually called normalization factors or normalizing constants.

They speak about it on the stats StackExchange site -- read the comments and note the tag used.

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