Since we are trading amiable insults here, I'll suggest it is Nick who
has confused the principle of processing data with the computational
problem of representing the data. I certainly have no qualms about
teaching users that something may be TRUE, FALSE or UNKNOWN, and Nick's
reluctance reinforces my view that politicians and managers are barking
mad when they always demand (or claim to know) "the answer" with
"absolute certainty".
Stata implements value+missing -> missing
value*missing -> missing
and
value / 0 -> missing
so why should
value>0 -> 1, when value is missing
be a sacred cowpat?
I agree there are problems in now changing the definition, so have
suggested a warning in the output. Otherwise you *will* have
computer-aided disasters due to mixing missing and real data. I wonder
how many medical analyses using Stata have used something like:
regress y x1-xN if age>60
I'll shut up on this one.
Allan
Oh the string variable was only specified because "invade 5" didn't
seem to make any sense whereas invade "Iraq" ... damn, maybe that
doesn't make any sense either.
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
