Re: st: RE: RE: carryforward

[David Kantor <kantor.d@att.net>]

I should add that I agree with Nick's assessment -- that carryforward 
(or an equivalent operation) is appropriate in some situations, as he 
described, but not for imputing missing values.
--David

At 12:58 PM 1/23/2012, you wrote:
> If this method is one of imputing missing values that in practice 
> will be varying by a constant that was the last observed value, then 
> as Tony implies it clearly can be problematic.
>
> But the method of replacing missing values by previous non-missing 
> values is one I often use with small datasets entered by hand. When 
> the observations come in blocks, I only need to type in values for 
> the first identifier in each block, and then -replace- appropriately.
>
> Sometimes datasets arrive like that too. Only the first value in a 
> block of some blocked variable is explicit, so you have to fill in 
> (or fill out) implied similar values.
>
> Nick
> [...]

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