Descriptive statistics on a constant series

[startz]

If you ask for descriptive statistics on a series with only one value, you get a "Data have zero variance" alert. Hey, I still might want to know the mean or something. How about showing me the descriptive stats like I asked for? (I could swear this was fixed a couple of versions ago.)

[EViews Glenn]

Code: Select all

series y=3 y.stats smpl @first @first y.stats

works fine for me (for both definitions of only one value).

[startz]

Try view/descriptive statistics.

[EViews Glenn]

Your description was still not descriptive enough :)

It turns out that the error is reported in the histogram and stats view. I think the issue is that we won't draw a histogram for a series with zero variance, as the algorithm for bin width requires variability. The statistics table view that I pointed you to will show you all of the statistics you want (more even than the histogram view). And if you really want the histogram, I'm pretty sure the standard histogram graph with user bin width would happily draw something for you.