st: How function "group" works in Stata?

[Shourun Guo <guosa@bc.edu>]

Say I have a variable "a" and 10 observations with the value 1,2,3,...,10.

gen b=group(2), I will get 2 evenly divided subsample. variable "b" has the value 1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2.

but if I input, gen c=group(a), variable "c" will have the value 1,1,1,2,3,4,5,7,8,10.

How the value of "c" is assigned? Just curious.
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