David,
Daniel is exactly right. In general, it is not a good idea to try to cram
two pieces of data into one column. Your questions at the end of your post
are good examples of why you don't do it that way. With a population column
and a separate population_note column, you can easily answer
One simple option would be to add a footnote column. And add in your code, if
footnote column is NOT NULL then add a * on to population and
show footnote at the bottom.
population footnote
100 null
200*yada yada
>>Suppose I have several columns of numberals - are
