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st: question about converting string vars to numerical vars


From   "Joy Chen" <[email protected]>
To   "Stata List" <[email protected]>
Subject   st: question about converting string vars to numerical vars
Date   Wed, 26 Jan 2005 17:42:37 +0100

Hi,

I wonder if anyone knows to how to solve this problem. I have a .txt data
and I used -insheet using data1.txt, t- to import it into stata. It shows
that the display type of the variables are string variable. I tried to
convert them into numerical vars. I replaced #.# in -format-  command with
#,#  as it is European decimal symbol (the comma) used in data. After many
trials, it still gives me strange result. The mean, max and min of the
variables are far away from the truth.  For example, the mean for e1 should
be -0,27145726 but stata gives 1,64654, for f1 the true mean is 0,49880390,
in stata is  2,299758 .

Did I make some mistake in the code? Can anyone give me a hand? Many thanks.

 des v1 v2

              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
v1              str11  %11s
v2              str11  %11s

 list v1 v2 in 1/10

     +--------------------------+
     |          v1           v2 |
     |--------------------------|
  1. | -0,22561362   1,02236428 |
  2. | -0,39622573   1,53583639 |
  3. | -0,24692422   0,25572723 |
  4. | -0,31088329   0,51172709 |
  5. | -0,31088329   0,25589082 |
     |--------------------------|
  6. | -0,28955905   0,25583627 |
  7. | -0,31088329   0,25589082 |
  8. | -0,24692422   0,25572723 |
  9. | -0,15106225   0,12774791 |
 10. | -0,22561362   0,51129102 |
     +--------------------------+

 encode v1 in 1/10 , gen (e1)

. encode v2 in 1/10 , gen (f1)

. format %09,2f  e1  f 1

. set dp comma

   list e1 f1 in 1/10

     +-----------------------+
     |        e1          f1 |
     |-----------------------|
  1. | -0,225613   1,0223642 |
  2. | -0,396225   1,5358363 |
  3. | -0,246924   0,2557272 |
  4. | -0,310883   0,5117270 |
  5. | -0,310883   0,2558908 |
     |-----------------------|
  6. | -0,289559   0,2558362 |
  7. | -0,310883   0,2558908 |
  8. | -0,246924   0,2557272 |
  9. | -0,151062   0,1277479 |
 10. | -0,225613   0,5112910 |
     +----------------------

des e1  f1

Contains data
  obs:           10
 vars:             4
 size:         4.692 (99,6% of memory free)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
e1               long   %09,2f      e1
f1               long   %09,2f      f1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
   . su e1 f1 in 1/10

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
          e1 |        10         3,6    1,646545          1          6
          f1 |        10         4,2    2,299758          1          8


Joy Chen
Munich Graduate School of Economics
University of Munich
Kaulbachstra�e 45
D-80539 Munich / Germany
Email: [email protected]


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