# Computed columns

Indicator, recode, and combination columns; squaring, summing, multiplying, and other transformations

About indicator variables
An indicator variable takes a value of 0 or 1 according to a defined expression

About recode variables
Recode variables transform the input values according to a lookup table

Summing, multiplying, and dividing numeric columns
Create custom expressions with computed columns

Treating a column as categorical data
Category columns can be used to group and tabulate observations

Creating an interaction term between two or more category columns
Interaction terms are useful when constructing complex tabulations and models

Concatenating two or more text columns
Splice together the text values of two or more columns with an optional separator

Creating a constant column
Create a column that takes a single value for all rows

Composing a date or time column from one or more components
Create a date column using year, quarter, month, week, and day information; or a time column from hour and minute information

Creating an indicator variable
Create an indicator variable with an expression on one or more columns

Creating a recode variable
Create a lookup table that transforms a category column’s values

Computing the time elapsed between two date columns
Calculate the number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years between two columns

Editing a composed date or time column
Edit the numeric components that define an existing date or time column

Editing an indicator variable
Edit the underlying expression that defines an existing indicator variable

Editing a recode variable
Edit the lookup table that defines a recode variable

Extracting date or time components from a date or time column
Extract year, quarter, month, week, and day information from a date column, or hour and minute information from a date or time column

Taking the leading digit of a numeric column
The leading digit can be useful for detecting accounting fraud

Computing the logarithm of a numeric column
The logarithm computes the order of magnitude of a numeric column

Computing powers of a numeric column
Exponentiation is a flexible tool for transforming numeric data

Computing the quantiles of a numeric column
Quantiles reflect the relative values of records in the overall data

Rounding a numeric column to integer values
Numeric columns can be rounded up, down, towards zero, or to the nearest integer

Treating a column as survival times
Treat a column as survival times to produce survival curves and test for differences in an underlying hazard rate

Counting the number of words or characters in a text column
Store the word or character count in a new column

Computing the standardization of a numeric column
The standardization adjusts for the scale of numeric columns

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