Re: st: RE: Generating dummies

["Michael S. Hanson" <mshanson@mac.com>]

On Jun 21, 2005, at 4:02 PM, Nick Cox wrote:

> Well, somebody can't count. So long as it's not
> Stata, I guess the matter should rest there.
	These are the FIPS codes.  FIPS = "Federal Information Processing 
Standards".  Details at <http://www.census.gov/geo/www/fips/fips.html> 
and, in particular, <http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip5-2.htm>.  
(Remember: "Google is your friend." (tm))  For anyone working with U.S. 
state data issued by U.S. gov't agencies, these are standard (hence the 
"S" in "FIPS") and common.  And, yes, there are still only 50 U.S. 
states.  There are, however, 51 FIPS codes between Alabama and Wyoming, 
inclusive:  FIPS 11 is the District of Columbia, which (for those 
outside the U.S.) is not a state.  Hence, -drop if fips == 11- is 
appropriate for many empirical applications.  Since FIPS codes are 
standard, they can assist with -merge-s and other data management 
applications.  HTH.

                                        -- Mike

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