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Re: st: mysterious inaccuracy when adding big numbers


From   Richard Goldstein <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: mysterious inaccuracy when adding big numbers
Date   Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:00:29 -0400

1. if you type -search precision- you will learn about this issue

2. id's are generally best as strings, however, so I would do something
like the following:

gen str id=str(province)+str(district)+str(commune)+str(household)

3. if you need to make it numeric insert "double" between your "gen" and
your "ID"

Rich

On 4/8/11 10:49 AM, Trang Nguyen wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I am working on a dataset with households as observations that are
> nested in communes, districts and provinces. I have variables
> - province: province number (3 digits)
> - district: district number within each province (max 2 digits)
> - commune: commune number within each district (max 2 digits)
> - household: household number within each commune (max 2 digits)
> 
> I wanted to make a unique ID for each household that doesn't repeat
> across communes, districts and provinces, that also shows me all the
> province/district/commune information. So I did this:
> gen ID = province*1000000 + district*10000 + commune*100 + household
> 
> I got a variable ID that is correct for the province, district and
> commune components, but the last two digits do not match the value of
> the household variable. Instead they are 04 or 12 or 20.
> 
> Could someone please help me figure out why this is so? My output is
> below. Thanks much!
> 
> . gen ID = province*1000000 + district*10000 + commune*100 + household
> 
> . count if ID != province*1000000 + district*10000 + commune*100 + household
>  7932
> 
> . format ID %15.0g
> 
> . list province district commune household ID in 1/20
> 
>     +------------------------------------------------------+
>     | province   district   commune   househ~d          ID |
>     |------------------------------------------------------|
>  1. |      101          1         3          1   101010304 |
>  2. |      101          1         3          2   101010304 |
>  3. |      101          1         3          4   101010304 |
>  4. |      101          1         3          5   101010304 |
>  5. |      101          1        17          4   101011704 |
>     |------------------------------------------------------|
>  6. |      101          1        17          5   101011704 |
>  7. |      101          1        17          6   101011704 |
>  8. |      101          1        17          8   101011712 |
>  9. |      101          1        17          9   101011712 |
>  10. |      101          1        17         10   101011712 |
>     |------------------------------------------------------|
>  11. |      101          1        17         11   101011712 |
>  12. |      101          3         3          3   101030304 |
>  13. |      101          3         3          4   101030304 |
>  14. |      101          3         3          5   101030304 |
>  15. |      101          3         3          6   101030304 |
>     |------------------------------------------------------|
>  16. |      101          3         3          7   101030304 |
>  17. |      101          5        11          3   101051104 |
>  18. |      101          5        11          6   101051104 |
>  19. |      101          5        11          9   101051112 |
>  20. |      101          5        11         10   101051112 |
>     +------------------------------------------------------+
> 
> . codebook ID
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ID                                                             (unlabeled)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>                  type:  numeric (float)
> 
>                 range:  [1.010e+08,8.231e+08]        units:  1
>         unique values:  1308                     missing .:  0/8341
> 
>                  mean:   4.6e+08
>              std. dev:   2.6e+08
> 
>           percentiles:        10%       25%       50%       75%       90%
>                           1.1e+08   2.1e+08   4.1e+08   7.1e+08   8.1e+08
> 
> Thanks much!
> 
> Trang
> 
> ------------------------
> Trang Nguyen
> Doctoral student
> Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
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