Thank you very much. I assumed missing values were a separate entity... not positive infinity. Good to learn this. And better late than never.
D
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Peter J. Burke
Sent: October 3, 2006 6:53 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: st: RE: missing values nightmare?
Diego,
See FAQ on this http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/values.html
Peter
Peter J. Burke
Professor
Department of Sociology
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521-0419
Phone: 951/827-7004
Fax: 951/827-3330
[email protected]
http://wat2146.ucr.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Diego Bassani
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 3:47 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: st: missing values nightmare?
I had no clue this could happen and I am horrified it does...
When I write a simple line in stata 9.0
recode x 0=1 if z>2
I get all values of x that equal 0 recoded into 1 when z equals . or .a or
.b
this means Stata understands missing values as large numbers...
I have tried a couple of times and it consistently recodes considering
missing values as larger than life numbers
see the example of the dataset
var1 var2 var3 var4
1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0
10 0 1 0
10 0 1 0
10 0 1 0
100 0 1 0
100 0 1 0
100 0 1 0
1000 0 1 0
1000 0 1 0
1000 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
. 0 1 0
after running the following line, which should recode only 9 values, what I
get is the dataset below.
recode var2 0=1 if var1>1
var1 var2 var3 var4
1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0
10 1 1 0
10 1 1 0
10 1 1 0
100 1 1 0
100 1 1 0
100 1 1 0
1000 1 1 0
1000 1 1 0
1000 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
. 1 1 0
Is it possible that no one noticed this? And if yes, why did stata not fix
it yet?
The way around it was tricking the system by recoding the missing values
into some very small or negative value, temporarily, so we can make the
transformations without the giant missing value bug playing its tricks...
I am astonished.
Diego
Diego G. Bassani, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Epidemiologist - Post-Doctoral Fellow
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Health Systems Research & Consulting Unit
33 Russell Street, Tower - T308
Toronto, ON - M5S 2S1
[email protected]
http://www.camh.net/hsrcu
Phone: +01 (416) 535 8501 # 6465
Fax: +01 (416) 979 4703
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
