topic Re: making a dummy variable in Data Management Questions

making a dummy variable

YoshiroNagao — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:58:06 GMT

Dear all,
I have a geocoded table, in which the landuse of a point is classified into 4 categories (paved, forest, farm, water).
I want to make a new variable which denotes whether a specific point is, say, paved or not.

new variable
paved --> 1
forest --> 0
farm ---> 0
water --> 0

How can such a new dummy variable be made in the ArcGIS?

Thanks.

Re: making a dummy variable

AlexeyTereshenkov — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:45:44 GMT

Hi,

Do you want to calculate these what you call "dummy variable" values into a separate field? If yes, you can select those rows where type="paved" and then use the Field Calculator to calculate "0" into a newly added field called VariableValue or something.

You can also store this information in an attribute domain table by using subtypes: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//003n0000000p000000

Re: making a dummy variable

YoshiroNagao — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:27:17 GMT

Hi Alex,

Thank you very much for the extremely useful answer.

But I cannot find the two buttons to the right...

Where are they?

Re: making a dummy variable

AlexeyTereshenkov — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:38:05 GMT

No problem, you are welcome.

The buttons are on the right side (do you see this 0 with two arrows up and down?):

Check the page here as well if you are confused how to use this:

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgis/archive/2012/01/20/New-Features-for-the-ArcGIS-Discussion-Forums-.aspx