Is the message
"id*Delta(time) does not uniquely identify observations."
going to solve this problem? As I understand it,
the question of uniqueness is absolute and not
dependent on what is displayed given some -width()-.
As StataCorp will be touching the code for -xtdes-,
I suggest that they also touch the on-line help and point
to the official commands -isid- and -duplicates-
as tools which it seems can be helpful here. The
manual entry can follow in due course.
Nick
[email protected]
Richard Gates
> The previous version of -xtdes- could exceed the maximum
> number of variables
> when attempting to identify the participation patterns if the
> time range was
> large relative to the minimum time increment.
>
>
> The new code will detect that the participation patterns
> display will exceed
> the maximum display width, -width-. The current default width
> is 100 which on
> most displays will wrap and be illegible anyway. The logic in
> -xtdes- will find
> the time increment that will give the display a width close
> to -width-. I
> enroneously used the logic that traps this condition to also
> identify that time by
> id does not uniquely identify an observation.
>
>
> As Nick pointed out, it is simply a bogus message (in Steve's
> case) and more
> logic needs to be added to detect whether or not time by id
> uniquely identifies
> an observation in this situation. Or maybe it should say,
> "id*Delta(time)
> does not uniquely identify observations."
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