st: re: Stata's row and column labels for matrices

[Elmer Villanueva <evillanu@mac.com>]

Dear Kit,

Thanks for this. Your right, of course. I feel rather stupid having raised it in the first place. I've got a simple brain and it seemed to me that if the resulting matrices were labelled r1, r2... and c1, c2..., even if they weren't really rows and columns, it could easily be misinterpreted by people like me, especially if the matrix calculations are complex and there aren't any suitable markers. But, as you say, they're mere names and I'm sure Stata's got it right all along. Anyway, matrices don't really need column or row names at all. However, if rows and columns are named, shouldn't they be labelled more informatively? Perhaps they can even consider adopting your notation automatically so that matrices created by hand aren't unimaginatively named. I guess I was thinking that output should be informative or it should be dropped. You've showed, I suppose, that the calculation involving eight hand-entered matrices A-H producing a single matrix with names r1, r2... for both rows and columns simply means that the results were derived from rows of one matrix and the rows of another. Which ones? Irrelevant. As you say, there's really nothing to it and Stata's got it right.

I appreciate the answer!

Cheers

Elmer

Elmer V Villanueva, MD ScM FRIPH
Epidemiologist 

National Breast Cancer Centre
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