topic Re: Question about precision of a variable in New SAS User

Question about precision of a variable

Annie_Fréchette — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:33:28 GMT

Hi!

In my access table, my numeric variable has been entered manually by me and looks like, for example, 34.4. When I import it in SAS, the same variable become 34.400001526. The format is numeric BEST12. What is causing this?

Thanks,

Annie

Re: Question about precision of a variable

ballardw — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:41:13 GMT

@Annie_Fréchette wrote:

Hi!

In my access table, my numeric variable has been entered manually by me and looks like, for example, 34.4. When I import it in SAS, the same variable become 34.400001526. The format is numeric BEST12. What is causing this?

Thanks,

Annie

This is a not uncommon issue with decimal values not being represented quite as desired by binary and possibly complicated by how the Access to SAS conversion was accomplished.

You can try to round your value in the SAS data set to one decimal. In a data step

data want;

set have;

var = round(var, 0.1);

run;

Re: Question about precision of a variable

Annie_Fréchette — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:47:43 GMT

Thks! I will round it of course. I was wondering where all that precision suddenly came from...

Have a nice day!

Annie