Statalist The Stata Listserver


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date index][Thread index]

RE: st: finding a peak in an asymmetric curve


From   "David Harrison" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: finding a peak in an asymmetric curve
Date   Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:00:50 +0100

In terms of the position of the peak, -pkexamine- will only tell you the
observed value of x that has the highest observed value of y.

If you know (or hypothesise) the underlying functional form of the data,
you could find a theoretical peak by using -nl- to fit a non-linear
model to the data, e.g.

. nl (y = x * exp(-(x - {c})/{r})), init(c 0 r 1) nolog
(obs = 68)

      Source |       SS       df       MS
-------------+------------------------------         Number of obs =
68
       Model |  5571019.21     2  2785509.61         R-squared     =
0.9992
    Residual |  4437.80091    66  67.2394078         Adj R-squared =
0.9992
-------------+------------------------------         Root MSE      =
8.199964
       Total |  5575457.01    68  81992.0149         Res. dev.     =
477.1073

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
           y |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf.
Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------
------
          /c |   .2423345   .0016988   142.65   0.000     .2389427
.2457263
          /r |   .0226752   .0001888   120.13   0.000     .0222983
.023052
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
* (SEs, P values, CIs, and correlations are asymptotic approximations)

If this functional form is correct, then the estimate for the peak is at
0.0227 (the value of the parameter r) and we also have a confidence
interval for it.

However, examining the results graphically shows that this functional
form is clearly wrong...

. twoway function y = x * exp(-(x - _b[c:_cons])/_b[r:_cons]), range(x)
///
	|| scatter y x ///
	, legend(off) xli(`=_b[r:_cons]')

If the points are as dense as in the example you gave, then just looking
at the point with the highest y value is a good bet. If you have bigger
gaps, you may want to think along these lines but remember that a
slightly wrong function could give you a totally wrong result.

Hope this helps

David

______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email 
______________________________________________________________________

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/



© Copyright 1996–2024 StataCorp LLC   |   Terms of use   |   Privacy   |   Contact us   |   What's new   |   Site index