In
applied mathematics, a number is
normalized when it is written in
scientific notation with one nonzero decimal digit before the decimal point. Thus, a
real number when written out in normalized scientific notation is as follows:
![](http://info.babylon.com/onlinebox.cgi?rt=GetFile&uri=!!ARV6FUJ2JP&type=0&index=44)
where
n is an
integer,
![](http://info.babylon.com/onlinebox.cgi?rt=GetFile&uri=!!ARV6FUJ2JP&type=0&index=3682)
,
![](http://info.babylon.com/onlinebox.cgi?rt=GetFile&uri=!!ARV6FUJ2JP&type=0&index=256)
... are the
digits of the number in base 10, and
![](http://info.babylon.com/onlinebox.cgi?rt=GetFile&uri=!!ARV6FUJ2JP&type=0&index=2751)
is not zero. That is, its leading digit (i.e. leftmost) is not zero and is followed by the decimal point. This is the
standard form of
scientific notation. An alternative style is to have the first non-zero digit
after the decimal point.