correct?) [Stata 8.2]
To my surprise, using brackets to indicate observation
number works with local and global macros, but not
with the scalar command.
As an example, consider the following dataset:
. list
+------------------------+
| year unemp gdpgap |
|------------------------|
1. | 1986 6.6 -.00888 |
2. | 1987 5.7 .00569 |
3. | 1988 5.3 .01402 |
4. | 1989 5.4 .01267 |
5. | 1990 6.3 -.01081 |
|------------------------|
6. | 1991 7.3 -.02822 |
7. | 1992 7.4 -.01411 |
8. | 1993 6.5 -.01542 |
<snip>
. global yy=unemp[5]
. di $yy
6.3000002
So far so good (ignoring the problem with the float
datatype). Now try the same with a scalar command:
. scalar y=unemp[5]
. di y
1986
Here, Stata inexplicably appears to insert the upper
left hand observation from the dataset, which happens
to correspond to "year" rather than "unemp".
The following will work properly though:
. scalar z=unemp in 5
. di z
6.3000002
Any comments?
What if I want to make a scalar a function of two
different observations? (I suppose in the latter case
I could grab the observations with a local macro, then
insert the values into the scalar, but then I would
lose any precision or speed advantages of the scalar
method).
As the fine manual notes, macros provide up to 13
significant digits in scientific notation, while
scalars provide more. Macros are also somewhat
slower. If neither of these factors is especially
important, perhaps the casual programmer might want to
stick with macros.
-HL
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