st: Re: numbering observations

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

bysort person date: gen jobs=_n

Michael Blasnik
michael.blasnik@verizon.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "daphna" <dbassok@stanford.edu>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 3:45 PM
Subject: st: numbering observations



> I have a very basic question, so I am sorry to bother the list members if 
> this is too obvious.
>
> I have observations about people at 24 time points and oftentimes I have 
> more than 1 observation per time period.  The data is about earnings, so 
> for instance, if a person had two jobs in june 1996, i have two 
> observations for them then.  If they had 3 jobs in october 1996, I would 
> have 3 observations for that time period-  one observation per job.
>
> For now,  all I would like to do it create a new variable "jobs" which 
> arbitrarily assigns a number to each job within a time period. (ie.  1 for 
> the first job in 6/96, 2 for the second, 1 for the first job in 10/96... 
> etc)
>
> (eventually i will use this variable to reshape the data)
>
> I hope my question makes sense.  I can't seem to find a command that will 
> do this, but I may have just missed it.
>
> Thanks for any advice,
>
> Daphna
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