Re: st: display number of decimal places

[Ronnie Babigumira <rb.glists@gmail.com>]

I fully agree with you Nick. 

My first thought was along the precision/-format- lines but on reading the email again, I saw that the Rebecca was interested in the maximum number of decimals so I assumed she had considered both but still wanted to go ahead and count hence my example with observations having different places.

-- 
010100100110111101101110011011100110100101100101




On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Nick Cox wrote:

> This is a much more tangled question than Ronnie's examples might seem
> to imply.
> 
> If the problem really is keeping track of exactly how many decimal
> places were entered (meaning, input) there is only one infallible
> method: entering the data as a string and working out the number by
> string manipulation.
> 
> Otherwise, as my earlier post in this thread indicated, the idea that
> there is a fixed number of decimal places which is a characteristic of
> non-integer data is just a confusion. Only when a decimal can be
> represented exactly by a binary is there an unequivocal answer.
> 
> Nick
> 
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Ronnie Babigumira <rb.glists@gmail.com (mailto:rb.glists@gmail.com)> wrote:
> > One way to do it (there may be more direct ways)
> > 
> > clear
> > input x y
> > -1.273682 1.1234
> > 1.1 1.2345
> > 1.12 1.12
> > end
> > 
> > gen ndmals_x = length(substr(string(x)),strpos(string(x),"."),.)-1
> > gen ndmals_y = length(substr(string(y)),strpos(string(y),"."),.)-1
> > 
> > * To get max
> > egen max_ndmals_x = max(ndmals_x)
> > egen max_ndmals_y = max(ndmals_y)
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > list
> > 
> > Ronnie
> > --
> > 010100100110111101101110011011100110100101100101
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 9:21 AM, Rebecca Coates wrote:
> > 
> > > Dear Statlist,
> > > Is there a way I can produce a list that shows not the number of columns in a variable, but the maximum number of decimal places after the decimal point?
> > > For example, the variable RPZ_S1 is a float variable, with the format %9.0g and contains Z scores.
> > > Example values look like this: -1.273682
> > > I would like to produce a list that tells me that variable RPZ_S1 contains 6 decimal places.
> > > 
> > > Thank you
> > > Rebecca Coates
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Rebecca Coates
> > > Data Archivist/ PhD Candidate
> > > Australian Data Archive- UQ Node
> > > Institute for Social Science Research
> > > The University of Queensland
> > > Room 419, Level 4, GPN3 (Building 39A), Campbell Road
> > > ST LUCIA QLD 4072
> > > AUSTRALIA
> > > 
> > > Phone: +61 7 334 60747
> > > Email: r.coates@uq.edu.au (mailto:r.coates@uq.edu.au)
> > > Website: http://www.issr.uq.edu.au | http://www.ada.anu.edu.au
> > > CRICOS Provider No. 00025B
> > > 
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> > > 
> > > Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
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