How to change display of scientific notation of summary statistics to nummeric?

[Stan Hissink]

Stata 15.1

I am attempting to create a descriptive statistics table for my thesis. However, I found that variables with large numbers are displayed using the scientific notation.
In my attempt to change it, I read many FAQ's and other discussions about this problem, but none of these options seemed to work for me.

The data type of the variables is

double

, please see below.

sum var1

    Variable |        Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
      var1 |     12,286    1.18e+09    2.21e+10   .0223229   7.71e+11

format var1 %24.0f

sum var1

    Variable |        Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
      var1 |     12,286    1.18e+09    2.21e+10   .0223229   7.71e+11

recast float var1, force
var1:  12072 values changed

sum var1

    Variable |        Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
      var1 |     12,286    1.18e+09    2.21e+10   .0223229   7.71e+11

I saw in a reply by Jorrit on a similar question to string the variable, however in that case I am unable to compute summary statistics, right? https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...tific-notation I cannot test this because I get the following message:

tostring var1, gen(var1s) format("%17.0f")
var1 cannot be converted reversibly; no generate

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Stan

[Nick Cox]

I would change the units to billions. Your tastes may differ but it’s hard for me to imagine practical, scientific or statistical meaning to a display of more than 6 or 8 digits.

[Stan Hissink]

Thanks Nick! That is indeed a useful tip I did not think about. It will make some variables really small but overall easier for interpretation. Moreover, your observation about the numbers and its size made me think and I found that I made some crucial mistakes while creating the variables... Thank you for that as well!

[Nick Cox]

Or ... use logarithms.