Statalist


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: st: question related to collapse


From   David Kantor <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: question related to collapse
Date   Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:11:25 -0500

At 06:36 PM 12/4/2008, Laura Grigolon wrote:
Dear Statalister,

I have a dataset with several variables, among which a discrete variable X that looks as follows.

-------------------
        X
obs1    60
obs2    60
obs3    60
obs4    70
obs5    71
obs6    71
obs7    71
obs8    71
obs9    71
obs10   71
--------------------

My final purpose is to treat adjacent observations for which the variable X does not change by more than 10% as the same observation. In other words, I would like to collapse the dataset by X, but whenever the distance between two or more adjacent observations in X is less than 10%, I would like to collapse by a median of x. Before collapsing I tried to generate a median of X whenever the difference within X is less than 10%, and then collapse by X, but I am not succeding. Is this the right approach? Is there a way of collapsing specifying my requirement?

Thank you in advance,
Laura

I don't have a solution, but I'll alert you to some potential problems that I can see. There may be some ambiguity in how your problem is defined. Suppose you have this sequence of values:
60, 65, 70
65 is within 10% of 60; 70 is within 10% of 65; but 70 is not within 10% of 60.
So does this define a cluster of "close" values? Does the 70 get put together with 60 by virtue of being linked through a 65? If so, then the clusters of close values would be, in part, determined by the order of the data. Is that what you have in mind?
Another example:
901, 1000 -- no, 1000 is not within 10% of 901.
1000, 901 -- yes, 901 is within 10% of 1000.
Or generally, if a is within 10% of b, it is not always the case that b is within 10% of a.
Again, the order matters.
So you need to ask, do you want the order to matter, and do you want to allow "linking" as in the 60,65,70 example? I believe that you do, since you mentioned "adjacent". (And maybe you want to have sorted the values first -- or maybe not, in which case there may be some existing natural order.)
If so, then you can do something like this (untested):
gen byte w10pct = abs(X/X[_n-1] -1) < .1 & _n >1
gen int cluster_id = sum(w10pct ==0)

This way, cluster_id takes a new value every time a value of X occurs that is >= 10% different from the predecessor. You can then take a mean or median or whatever you want -- by cluster_id -- using egen.

If, on the other hand, you don't want the order of data to matter, then you need to find some other way to group the X values into clusters. (Maybe sort, and them apply the algorithm described above.)

HTH
--David

P.S., there is an interesting phenomenon here, with the order and linking effects, particularly if the X are sorted. You seem to want to seek a middle value of a cluster of values. And hopefully, the values will be within 10% of that middle value. On the other hand, the detection of the cluster is based on its leading value (lowest, if data are sorted).

Another possibility is that you would want to avoid linking. In that case, the clusters should be determined whenever a value differs from its predecessor by more than 10%. But then you would test how close subsequent values are to that leading value. It's getting complicated.

Good luck.
--David

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/



© Copyright 1996–2024 StataCorp LLC   |   Terms of use   |   Privacy   |   Contact us   |   What's new   |   Site index