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Re: st: copying contents form existing to new variable


From   Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To   "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject   Re: st: copying contents form existing to new variable
Date   Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:46:05 +0100

Your variables are, it may be guessed, numerically identical. See the
results of -summarize-.

-total- has a value label, but -NumberExamined- seemingly doesn't.
(You don't show -describe- for that.)

You didn't show any results for -list var1 var2 if var1 != var2- which
ignores the labels.

Why do you need a value label for what looks numeric? Why was the
original a string  variable any way? Perhaps there were problems with
stray characters.

Nick
[email protected]


On 24 April 2013 14:38, Patricia Biedermann <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello Nick,
>
> I used the -clonevar- command. The contents remained the same, but if
> I do a simple calculation (cross multiplication) with var2 then the
> results are wrong
>
> Here are some results of the approach I used before:
> NumberExamined should be the copy of total
>
> list total NumberExamined
>
> total   NumberExamined
> 1.    51         38
> 2.  18        10
> 3.   20         12
> 4.   19         11
> 5.   55         41
> etc
>
> describe total NumberExamined
>
>                                storage        display     value  variable
> variablename         type              format      label   label
>
> total                       long               %8.0g     stool    stooltest
>
> su total NumberExamined
>
> Variable                     Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
>
> total                             25       21.56     13.2164
> 1         45
> NumberExamined         25       21.56     13.2164          1         45
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
>> This could be as simple as your new variable not inheriting the value
>> labels of the -encode-d variable. (Have a look at -clonevar-.)
>>
>> Otherwise, we need more evidence. What you do mean by the contents
>> changing? Show us the results of
>>
>> . describe var1 var2
>> . su var1 var2
>> . list var1 var2 if var1 != var2        [example at least]
>>
>> Nick
>> [email protected]
>>
>> On 24 April 2013 10:10, Patricia Biedermann <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> If I generate a new variable from an existing variable it happens that
>>> the contents get changed.
>>> gen var2=var1
>>>
>>> My approach is following:
>>> 1) My original variable is string and I - encode - it: var1
>>> 2) gen var2=var1
>>>
>>> At step 2) the contents changes.
>>> I came along this Thread:
>>> http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-05/msg01280.html
>>> ..and tried to create a double variable first before copying the
>>> variables. Anyway, the same problem appears again.
>>>
>>> What could be the problem? It did this thing (gen var2=var1) many
>>> times and it always worked so far...
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