I'm going to be presenting university students with an entry field, into which they will have to enter a value. The value might be an integer, or it might be a floating point value. I'm trying to work out what the best way to label these is so they know what they have to enter.
Currently I have: Enter an integer
and enter a real number
. But I worry that some students are going to be confused by "real number" (Hmm, are the other types "unreal"?). We are pondering Enter a whole number
and Enter a number
, but the latter doesn't give an implicit clue that a decimal point is allowed. It is important that the student knows that the decimal is available, as it is most likely going to be needed (the question might be What is 5 divided by 2?
).
What terms are good for a wide audience to refer to integers and real numbers in this manner?
[edit] There are some good suggestions for asking questions better, but in my case I have no idea what the question might be, and my prompt has to be suitable for whatever that question might be. And it is a single question at a time, so that might help. Another suggestion from someone here was Enter a number
and Enter a number (decimals allowed)
which lets people know that they can go floating point.