Irina,
I will assume that your data are in appropriate numeric format (c.f. the
reply by Keith Dear). Then, you can generate the pattern variable as
follows:
. g one = start_m < start_f
. g two = finish_m < start_f
. g three = start_f < finish_m
. g four = finish_f < finish_m
. egen pattern = concat(one two three four)
. replace pattern = subinstr(pattern, "1", "M", .)
. replace pattern = subinstr(pattern, "0", "F", .)
These few lines will work in the presence of "special cases" like
missing values, ties and start/finish at the same time. However, these
cases are handled in a particular way. So it's up to you to amend the
code such that these special cases are handled the way you want.
Hope this helps,
jean
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 16:24:40 -0500
From: "Paley, Irina" <[email protected]>
Subject: st: sorting and referencing
Dear stata list servers,
Could I ask you for help on a creative solution to the following task, that I seem to find a little unusual (maybe there is an obvious answer to this?)
Suppose each household consists of a male and a female, and I have data on the time they record doing a certain task.
The data looks like this:
Start task, Male Finish task, Male Start task, Female Finish task, Female
household 1 5am 3pm 5pm 10pm
household 2 7am 2pm 8am 4pm
household 3 8am 5pm 9pm 4am
I want to sort, within each household, all numbers in ascending order (time increasing as we move to the right), so that the data looks like this:
Start task, Male
household 1 5am 3pm 5pm 10pm
household 2 7am 8am 2pm 4pm
household 3 8am 5pm 9pm 4am
...And then substitute each time by who it refers to (the male starting or finishing, or the female, so that it looks like this:
Household id Timing pattern
household 1: MMFF
household 2: MFMF
household 3: MMFF
*
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