Re: st: sort

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 11:21 PM 6/20/2005 -0400, Luhang Wang wrote:
> When I change the codes to "sort hhid x_temp", I get stable result.
> Does this work the same way as the stable option? The previous results
> are generally smaller than that after the change.
The more variables you sort on, the more likely you are to get a unique and 
hence stable sort order.  But, there is no automatic guarantee that a 2 (or 
1, or 3, or 4, or whatever) variable sort will produce a unique/stable 
sort.  Again, if it is important to always get the same results, use the 
-stable- option.


> However, I'm still not clear how the stable option may affect my
> result, since given the way x_temp is generated, it is the same for
> all the observations with the same hhid.
Are you sure about that?  I'm not quite sure what that code produces, but 
it seems like the if statement could be true and false for different cases 
with the same hhid, hence it matters which cases make the cut. (e.g. first 
case, hhid = 1, x_exp = -2, egen statement gets executed; 2nd case, hhid = 
1, x_exp = 0, egen statement does not get executed).  Without trying it I 
am not sure, but you may want to double-check that egen statement to see if 
it is doing what you want it to do.

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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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