one not so clever way to do would be to replace the missing obs with the
average of the values before and after.
replace rates = (rates[_n-1]+rates[_n+1])/2 if rates == .
then repeat to take care of consecutive missing values
replace rates = (rates[_n-1]+rates[_n+2])/2 if rates == .
i think you get my point, and you can repeat this by changing the values
to be averaged, until you fill in the entire variable.
i hope this helps,
radu ban
On Mon, 12 May 2003, Moon Joong wrote:
> Dear Stata Lovers,
>
> I'm trying to find a smart way to fill missing values with averages between
> nearest values. The data looks like the following:
>
> id year rates
> 1 1960 .35
> 1 1961 missing
> 1 1962 .45
> 1 1963 .47
> 1 1964 missing
> 1 1965 .46
> 2 1945 .2
> 2 1946 missing
> 2 1947 .35
> 2 1948 missing
> 3 1949 missing
> 3 1950 .56
> .....
>
> What I want to do is, take the example of id 1 of year 1961 (which is
> missing), to fill the average value between .35 and .45 (that is
> (.35+.45)/2) into the missinge observation of year 1961. Since I have a lot
> of observations to fill in, using brute force by hands takes forever and
> would be inaccurate. I think it's very straightfoward, which I don't know
> since I'm a beginner.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> MoonJoong
>
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