I've used _ and __ as placeholders for missing or invalid data. I then
filter them out as needed in calculations. It's simple and has worked out
fine for me.

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 11:22 AM, Erling Hellenäs <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> Programs which acted on arrays containing missing data would need
> definitions which accounted for this missing data.  Take a look at R. I
> think most languages have ways of handling missing data, even if
> calculations do not always work directly on arrays containing missing data,
> like they do in R.
>
> We could possibly have arrays of floats containing missing data without
> being able to do all our calculations on these arrays? We already have
> arrays of floats containing NaN, infinity and negative infinity? Would it
> be possible to have some of these NaN floats signal missing data? Could
> arrays with such NaN floats be used in some calculations which accounted
> for this missing data?
>
> Typically when you create report programs, you take care of missing data?
> The user might fill a form, he does not answer to some questions, the mean
> value of an answer for all users is the mean of the values filled, but how
> many and how big percentage are not filled is an important part of the
> result?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Erling
>
>
> Den 2017-09-20 kl. 16:40, skrev Henry Rich:
>
>> If a list (a) can contain 'missing' entries, what does (# a) mean?  What
>> happens to
>>
>> mean =: +/ % #
>>
>> ?
>>
>> How is u/\. a defined?
>>
>> Henry Rich
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 10:25 AM, Erling Hellenäs <
>> [email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Because you possibly have an array where some cells have missing data and
>>> you want to run your functions directly against this array without caring
>>> about the possibly missing data. Thats how I think R works. All functions
>>> work with cells where the data is missing. Correct me if I'm wrong. R
>>> might
>>> become the mostly used tool for statistics any day. It might well be
>>> worth
>>> the effort to look at their solutions if you ask me. /Erling
>>>
>>> Den 2017-09-20 kl. 12:27, skrev Raul Miller:
>>>
>>> Why not just use another number? Many more bits that way...
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>>
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