TITLE: What do we call the front part of a decimal number?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: I have the following number.
23.45

There are two parts of this number. 23 and 45. What is the mathematical name of the 23 part?

REPLY [4 votes]: According to this math.stackexchange post, you can also call them the characteristic (before) and mantissa (after). This what I heard when I was learning about floating point specifications.