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Re: st: Again-Unique Case ID in Large Panel


From   "Michael S. Hanson" <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Again-Unique Case ID in Large Panel
Date   Wed, 4 Aug 2004 15:49:48 -0400

On Aug 4, 2004, at 2:32 PM, Nick Cox wrote:

This is a question largely for StataCorp,
	Fair enough.


but one mundane answer is the need to list these
patterns horizontally on the monitor and in log files.
OK, I see why that might be -- but surely the preferred behavior of -xtdes- is not to _falsely_ claim that i*t do not identify all observations just because the subsequent table might be too wide!



Also, I doubt that anyone is going to eyeball tables
with several hundred columns even if their monitor or
printer paper is really big.
If -xtdes- were to use 100 as the default width, and not print the table if width > 100, I would have no problem with that. Even better, if the user specified a width(#) option with # > 100, then -xtdes- could interpret that as an indication that the user really does want to see several hundred columns. But regardless, I respectfully suggest that the information passed to the user regarding the "unique identification" of the panel should be independent of the width option, and accurate for any size panel.

I understand from the FAQ that one should be reticent from claiming any behavior in Stata reflects a bug -- so I shall not, but this sure seems to be leaning in that direction.



Nick
[email protected]

Michael Hanson

	Which brings me to the question: why even bother
setting a default width, let alone setting it so low?
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