st: Re: Generate puzzle

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

This comes up on Statalist about once per week.  It is an issue of 
precision.  If you want x to contain more than 7.5 digits of precision, then 
generate a double or long, not a float (gen double x=...).  see 
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/prec.html

Michael Blasnik
michael.blasnik@verizon.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrzej Niemierko" <aniemierko@PARTNERS.ORG>
To: "Stata" <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2006 2:34 PM
Subject: st: Generate puzzle



> Could someone please explain to me the following strange behaviour? When I
> generate a new variable:
> gen x=3366161 and then:
> gen x2=10*x1
> the number that I get for x2 is 33661608 (not the correct number 
> 33661610).
> When the initial x1 number is 3366162 the x2 is correct, that is 33661620.
> Any help?
> Andrzej
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