Hi there,
I apologize if this is an insultingly stupid question, but I managed to enroll in a political research class that involved very little actual research until this end of the semester. My problem is this. I'm attempting to describe a change dollars per state in a meaningful way, and the numbers are very skewed (not sure if that matters just yet, but I'll go on).
For example, here's are two variable, described in Stata:
From these, I generate a variable describing the difference:
If I transform dollars_diff into 4 ordinals along the percentiles displayed above, is that a meaningful way to look at the data? I'm sorry if I'm not providing enough information. Let me know what else is required and I'll immediately follow up. I genuinely appreciate the help anyone here can offer.
Thanks!
D
I apologize if this is an insultingly stupid question, but I managed to enroll in a political research class that involved very little actual research until this end of the semester. My problem is this. I'm attempting to describe a change dollars per state in a meaningful way, and the numbers are very skewed (not sure if that matters just yet, but I'll go on).
For example, here's are two variable, described in Stata:
Code:
dollars08 (unlabeled)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
type: numeric (double)
range: [0,16081.83] units: .01
unique values: 49 missing .: 0/50
mean: 593.904
std. dev: 2292.47
percentiles: 10% 25% 50% 75% 90%
1.57 13.95 54.47 309.69 1209.55
Code:
dollars07 (unlabeled)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
type: numeric (float)
range: [.34,2801.83] units: .01
unique values: 50 missing .: 0/50
mean: 245.761
std. dev: 471.463
percentiles: 10% 25% 50% 75% 90%
1.865 10.38 65.525 234.95 770.86
Code:
dollars_diff (unlabeled)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
type: numeric (float)
range: [-2518.97,15509.74] units: 1.000e-08
unique values: 50 missing .: 0/50
mean: 348.143
std. dev: 2282.93
percentiles: 10% 25% 50% 75% 90%
-364.915 -94.97 .02 62.06 892.27
Thanks!
D