New to stata, what am I doing wrong here?

[John Andersson]

I've gotten the task of putting these countries with these values into Stata. I need to find the average, the median, mode, range and the standard deviation. Which I am capable of doing when it is whole numbers, but I can't get it to do it with decimal numbers. I have both tried using '.' and ',' as decimal. But seems like when I type "summarize andel" it just can't cope with it, because something is clearly wrong.

I am attending University and just started this course. Not really too lucky with my tutor, and it can be quite frustrating doing it alone, when you want to do a lot, but you get stuck at details like these.

Support is very appreciated.

On top of that, what videos/courses are recommended for starting learning Stata as a solo student?

[Nick Cox]

Somehow andel was entered as a string variable. Perhaps you first typed text into the first observation and then deleted it, but the variable was born as string either way. So type

destring andel, replace

and try again.

I would recommend the Getting Started manual for your OS, which is bundled with the pdf documentation.

Please note FAQ Advice on thread titles and data examples.

[John Andersson]

That seemed to work thanks. I don't really have a pdf. Got a book from the school I will check out, and I can obviously google/youtube stuff. But maybe there was some good picks and recommendations - Guess I will check the FAQ out on thread titles and data examples and see if I can make sense of it.

[Nick Cox]

It worked.

Use the main menu to go Help > PDF documentation > Getting Started As you are using Stata at all, you should have access to its documentation.

You will need summarize andel, detail to get at the median.

I don't know how you're expected to get at the mode. I can think of more than three ways to do it, and I don't know what your teachers expect.

I'd tone down on the frankness. Your tutor may be reading this. It's the internet.

[Nick Cox]

Cross-posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/stata/comme...ng_wrong_with/

Please note our policy on cross-posting, which is that you are asked to tell us about it.