I want to generate a variable by making calculations comparing the
current observation to ALL the previous observations with the same id.
Let's say I want to sum the difference in variable x for the
observation 5 vs all the previous obs. It would look something like:
gen diffx=(x[5]-x[4])+(x[5]-x[3])+(x[5]-x[2])+(x[5]-x[1])
So I'd like to calculate something like the above for a dataset. The
result would look like:
id obs x diffx
1 1 2 0
1 2 5 3
1 3 6 5
1 4 8 11
1 5 11 23
2 1 3 0
2 2 4 1
2 3 6 5
2 4 7 8
2 5 9 16
2 6 11 26
I believe the solution is to use something more like:
gen diffx=(x[_n]-x[_n-1])+(x[_n]-x[_n-2])+(x[_n]-x[_n-3])+(x[_n]-x[_n-4])
This works if there are exactly 5 observations, but what if there is a
different number?
William
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