Re: st: Identifying unique values with codebook

[Maarten buis <maartenbuis@yahoo.co.uk>]

--- On Thu, 17/6/10, Michael N. Mitchell wrote:
> It seems to me that many of the "gotchas" arise
> from the fact that the default data type is "float"
> instead of "double". 

The typical variable in a dataset contains some sort
of measurement, and most measurements are nowhere 
near as precise to warant anything more than 2 or
3 digits of precision, so "float" is a perfectly
sensible default. This leaves variables that are
supposed to represent a unique identification 
number. Here double or long may help, but these
too can easily become too short for those cases,
which would then require you to switch to strings. 
So, I am not convinced about the usefulness if a 
switch of the default to double. 

-- Maarten

--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany

http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------


      

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