> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Winter
> Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 10:10 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: RE: using max and sdev functions more flexibly
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Pezzini,S (pgr) [mailto:[email protected]]
> > Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 9:49 AM
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: st: using max and sdev functions more flexibly
> >
> >
> > Dear Stata-listers,
> >
> > as my programming skills are very low, I would like to ask if
> > someone could help me get around a problem that I've been
> > trying to solve without success.
> >
> > The starting point is a dataset with inflation for years from
> > 1900 to 1995 and some country codes.
> > I would like to use the max and sdev function in order to
> > compute the maximum and the standard deviation of inflation
> > over an interval from 1920 (and successive decades) to every
> > year between 1975 and 1995, by country.
> > If I type:
> >
> > by ccode: egen maxinf=max(inflation) if year>=1920
> >
> > this only allows me to compute max and sdev over 1920 and
> > 1995, i.e. I get a constant over the whole time interval, not
> > staggered by year. I can't get to incorporate the information
> > "compute the standard deviation or the max UP TO EACH YEAR IN
> > THE INTERVAL [1975; 1995]".
> >
> > Maybe my request will be clearer if I tell you that I was
> > able to get what I wanted with another function, sum.
> > By typing:
> > by ccode: gen cuminf=sum(abs(inflation)) if year>=1920
> > I was able to compute the cumulative inflation from 1920 up
> > to each year in the interval [1975; 1995]. This was possible
> > because "gen y=sum(x)", computes a sum where the j-th obs on
> > y contains the sum of the first through j-th observations on x.
> >
> > Finally, I am using Stata 7.0 SE in Windows environment.
> >
> > Maybe this is a straightforward problem for you, so I would
> > be very grateful if you could point me to a solution.
> >
> > Thanks a lot,
> >
> > Silvia Pezzini
>
> So you want the "running maximum", it sounds like. This should do it:
>
> generate maxinf = inflation
> replace maxinf = max(maxinf,l.maxinf)
>
I didn't take note of your desire to do this -by ccode- in my initial
posting. If your data are properly -tsset-, then the code above will
work. (And Nick Cox's suggestion of -egenmore-'s record() function will
also work.
But the standard deviation code I originally listed does not work. One
approach is to use the alternate form of the standard deviation
calculation (which doesn't have great numerical accuracy, but might
serve your purposes):
by ccode (year) : gen double s_infl=sum(infl)
by ccode (year) : gen double s_infl2 = sum(infl^2)
by ccode (year) : gen n = sum(1)
gen run_sd = sqrt((n*s_infl2 - s_infl^2)/(n*(n-1)))
drop s_infl s_infl2 n
-Nick Winter
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