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Re: st: a question about number precision


From   Michael McCulloch <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: a question about number precision
Date   Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:44:52 -0700

Thank you very much!

At 05:52 AM 4/4/2006, you wrote:
In response to my posting about precision issues, Michael McCulloch
<[email protected]> asked, To: [email protected]

> May I ask, for those of us with lesser experience, what are the command
> methods to stick to in generating variables, so that the integer result we
> want isn't missed by Stata because of the binary storage?

The last sentence of my previous post pretty much said it:

      The rule is, "Make extraction calculations using integers."

Jian Zhang <[email protected]> wanted to extract the 127 part from 21557127.  My
solution was,

         . gen leftpart = int(ID/1000)
         . gen areaxxx = ID - leftpart*1000

although others have suggested

         . gen area = mod(ID, 1000)

and that is a great solution.  But going back to my solution, the point is
that even though I divided by 1000, I immediately truncated the result to an
integer.  If, every step of the way, values are integers, you cannot go wrong.

-- Bill
[email protected]
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Best wishes,
Michael


____________________________________

Michael McCulloch
Pine Street Clinic
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