Re: st: RE: -expand-, -expandcl-, and -set mem-; limit to the number of obs?

[Maarten buis <maartenbuis@yahoo.co.uk>]

--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany

http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------

--- Misha wrote:
> > "Why am I asking for so much memory?", you might
> > ask.  Well, I have a data set that, when expanded,
> > ought to give me about 2.63e+09 (i.e., nearly 
> > three billion) observations.

Many commands allow you to work with the unexpanded 
data by using fweights, see -help weight-. 
 
> How large is the .dta file you are using (not in
> observations, but in terms of disk space)?
> Keep in mind that the "size" of your dataset is more than
> just the number of observations; so, how many variables are
> in the dataset?  how many characters/digits are in your
> variables?  are there labels, notes, or other
> characteristics stored in your .dta file?  All of these
> will contribute to the amount of memory needed open the file
> in Stata (this is also why it is difficult to do a simple
> "back-of-the-envelope" calculation of the exact amount of
> memory you need).

Here is how to do such back of the envelope calculation:
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/datacalc.cgi

Hope this helps,
Maarten 


      

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