IN ENGLISH: 1. v. to chop off a piece; to shorten at one end. EX. He truncated his ice cream cone by eating the ice cream and the top half of the cone.

Editor's Note: Truncate is important in a math class now because calculators may represent a number in truncated decimal form. Consider the rational number two-thirds written in fraction form as 2/3 and in decimal form as .666... or . If a calculator writes the number in decimal notation it will not appear as .666... or as . It may be written as 2/3 or as .6666 (with some repetition of 6) or as .66667 (with some repetition of 6). The number is either rounded as .667 or truncated as .666. It is important to know how your calculator works and whether it truncates and uses the truncated number in computation (not a good idea), trucates "but really know" the number is not .666 but 2/3 and displays the truncated number for your use, or display the rounded number .667 for your use "but really knows" the number is 2/3.

APPLICATION: See list 400)


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