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Re: st: Top 10 Tricks in Stata (summary to date)


From   Roger Newson <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Top 10 Tricks in Stata (summary to date)
Date   Sun, 23 May 2004 19:26:56 +0100

At 18:32 23/05/04 +0100, Nick Cox wrote:
On Friday 21 May 2004 I asked

Which would we nominate as (say) the top ten tricks which are the
deepest and most Stataish features in what we use? What is _both_
simple _and_ deep?  What leads to great results with at most a few
lines of code?

...

I'd nominate straight away

1. -by:-.

2. -foreach- or -forval- with varlists or numlists.

3. -merge-. I rarely use it but -merge-masters have real leverage
in file manipulations.

4. -assert-. My candidate for the most underestimated command in
Stata (second is -count-).

5. -reshape-.

Any other nominations?

Nick
[email protected]

=============================================

Here is a compilation of responses, edited a bit. I omitted some
very general comments and the most facetious suggestions.  I don't
think everyone was playing exactly the same game, not that it
matters....
Nobody seems to have mentioned the -generate()- option of -gsort-, which can be very useful for making non-byable programs byable, especially in combination with -levels-. Typically, if -do_whatever- is a non-byable program, then the user can write

gsort byvar_1 byvar_2 byvar_n, gene(bygp)
levels bygp, local(bygps)
foreach B of numlist `bygps' {
do_whatever if bygp==`B'
}

and execute -do_whatever- for each by-group defined by the by-variables byvar_1, byvar_2 and byvar_n. Of course, a simple loop like the above can be improved on in specific cases by adding other commands, eg to provide a heading for each iteration.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
5th Floor, Capital House
42 Weston Street
London SE1 3QD
United Kingdom

Tel: 020 7848 6648 International +44 20 7848 6648
Fax: 020 7848 6620 International +44 20 7848 6620
or 020 7848 6605 International +44 20 7848 6605
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.kcl-phs.org.uk/rogernewson

Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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