A characteristic is a distinguishing feature of a person or thing. It may refer to:

Computing

Characteristic (biased exponent) In IEEE 754 floating-point numbers, the exponent is biased in the engineering sense of the word – the value stored is offset from the actual value by the exponent bias, also called a biased exponent. Biasing is done because exponents have to ...

, an ambiguous term formerly used by some authors to specify some type of exponent of a floating point number *

Characteristic (significand) The significand (also mantissa or coefficient, sometimes also argument, or ambiguously fraction or characteristic) is part of a number in scientific notation or in floating-point representation, consisting of its significant digits. Depending o ...

, an ambiguous term formerly used by some authors to specify the significand of a floating point number

Science

*''I–V'' or

current–voltage characteristic A current–voltage characteristic or I–V curve (current–voltage curve) is a relationship, typically represented as a chart or graph, between the electric current through a circuit, device, or material, and the corresponding voltage, or ...

, the current in a circuit as a function of the applied voltage *

Receiver operating characteristic A receiver operating characteristic curve, or ROC curve, is a graphical plot that illustrates the diagnostic ability of a binary classifier system as its discrimination threshold is varied. The method was originally developed for operators of m ...

Mathematics

* Characteristic (algebra) of a ring, the smallest common cycle length of the ring's addition operation *

Characteristic (logarithm) In mathematics, the common logarithm is the logarithm with base 10. It is also known as the decadic logarithm and as the decimal logarithm, named after its base, or Briggsian logarithm, after Henry Briggs, an English mathematician who pioneered ...

, integer part of a common logarithm *

Characteristic function In mathematics, the term "characteristic function" can refer to any of several distinct concepts: * The indicator function of a subset, that is the function ::\mathbf_A\colon X \to \, :which for a given subset ''A'' of ''X'', has value 1 at points ...

, usually the indicator function of a subset, though the term has other meanings in specific domains * Characteristic polynomial, a polynomial associated with a square matrix in linear algebra *

Characteristic subgroup In mathematics, particularly in the area of abstract algebra known as group theory, a characteristic subgroup is a subgroup that is mapped to itself by every automorphism of the parent group. Because every conjugation map is an inner automorphi ...

, a subgroup that is invariant under all automorphisms in group theory *

Characteristic value In linear algebra, an eigenvector () or characteristic vector of a linear transformation is a nonzero vector that changes at most by a scalar factor when that linear transformation is applied to it. The corresponding eigenvalue, often denoted ...

, another name for the eigenvalue of a matrix *

Characteristic vector (disambiguation) A characteristic vector may refer to: * an eigenvector * an indicator vector In mathematics, the indicator vector or characteristic vector or incidence vector of a subset ''T'' of a set ''S'' is the vector x_T := (x_s)_ such that x_s = 1 if s \in T ...

, another name for eigenvector of a matrix *

Characteristic word In mathematics, a Sturmian word (Sturmian sequence or billiard sequence), named after Jacques Charles François Sturm, is a certain kind of infinitely long sequence of characters. Such a sequence can be generated by considering a game of English ...

, a subclass of Sturmian word * Euler characteristic, a topological invariant *

Method of characteristics In mathematics, the method of characteristics is a technique for solving partial differential equations. Typically, it applies to first-order equations, although more generally the method of characteristics is valid for any hyperbolic partial ...

, a technique for solving partial differential equations

Other uses

Light characteristic A light characteristic is all of the properties that make a particular navigational light identifiable. Graphical and textual descriptions of navigational light sequences and colours are displayed on nautical charts and in Light Lists with the cha ...

, pattern of a lighted beacon * Another name for ability score in ''Dungeons & Dragons''

Computing

Science

Mathematics

Other uses

See also