Creating a distance variable in SPSS

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Anonymous
Creating a distance variable in SPSS 2016-06-06 11:38:29 Post No. 135682
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Creating a distance variable in SPSS Anonymous 2016-06-06 11:38:29 Post No. 135682 [Report]

I'm using SPSS to create a variable that is supposed to show the numerical distance between a case and a given value. My mathmatical/programming skills are too limited to figure this out though and I could not find any tutorial pertaining to this online. Does anyone here have an idea on how to compute this?

To be clear, what I need is the distance from a case to a given number where the given number is always the same for instance at a given value of 10:
Case says: 4
Distance is 6

Case says: 15
Distance is 5

I have no clue how to fix this mathmatically or as a function in SPSS. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 11:59:38 Post No.135687
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 11:59:38 Post No.135687 [Report]

dist=|case-10|
?

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:04:29 Post No.135690
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:04:29 Post No.135690 [Report]

>>135687
Thats what I tried first but I need distances as positive numbers, that method also gives negative answers.

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:06:28 Post No.135691
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:06:28 Post No.135691 [Report]

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>>135690
>absolute value
>negative numbers

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:10:19 Post No.135694
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:10:19 Post No.135694 [Report]

>>135691
I literally do not know what those things mean. I'm a political science student so I can't into math at all... Am I missing something here?

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:12:26 Post No.135695
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:12:26 Post No.135695 [Report]

>>135694
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_value

I don't believe you have never heard about this.

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:12:34 Post No.135697
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:12:34 Post No.135697 [Report]

>>135687
I get it now... the | | is the important bit.

>>135690
>>135694
I'm retarded.

Thank you very very much.

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:23:52 Post No.135703
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:23:52 Post No.135703 [Report]

Update: SPSS can't handle the | | part. I found out that you can compute a variable with negative and positive values into an absolute value variable using the command:

COMPUTE new_var=ABS(old_var)

So I guess to get it to work in SPSS takes 2 steps.

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:31:20 Post No.135709
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:31:20 Post No.135709 [Report]

>>135703
If only there were some way to combine two expressions.

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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:34:14 Post No.135713
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Anonymous 2016-06-06 12:34:14 Post No.135713 [Report]

>>135709
I sense a bit of sarcasm but thats okay, I know I'm completely retarded when it comes to this stuff but it works now so I'm happy enough :)