RE: st: gsort issue

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 04:47 PM 7/5/2007, Steichen, Thomas J. wrote:
> Isn't the simplest solution that missing should never be treated in
> Stata code as a "number"?
>
> Thus, things like sorts would need a documented definition of where
> missing go but we wouldn't have to work around the "numeric" missing
> so often.
>
> For example,
>   replace x = 3 if x > 2 & != .
> becomes the much simpler
>   replace x = 3 if x > 2
>
> I wonder how often I've messed up analyses because I forgot to tag
> on the "& != ." ?
Actually, you may have problems you don't know about, because this 
won't catch md codes of .a, .b, etc.!  I tend to say

!missing(x)

or else

< .

There was a lengthy spirited discussion a few years back on the 
profound moral and philosophical issues involved in handling missing 
data; see this post and its several followups:

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2004-01/msg00121.html


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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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