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From | "Martin Weiss" <martin.weiss1@gmx.de> |
To | <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu> |
Subject | RE: st: Overriding a loop if 0 observations using tabstat |
Date | Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:46:30 +0200 |
<> Pages 48 and 95 of http://www.stata.com/statamp/report.pdf indicate that -count- benefits more from parallelization than -su-, which might be yet another reason for its advantage. HTH Martin -----Original Message----- From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Nick Cox Sent: Dienstag, 27. April 2010 20:32 To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu Subject: RE: st: Overriding a loop if 0 observations using tabstat Apart from any question of a contest (I am happy to come last in this kind of game), it's interesting, although not surprising, that -count- retains a strong relative advantage on _better_ machines. Nick n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk Jeph Herrin t=48.90; t=60.45; t=72.30. :> Martin Weiss wrote: > > t=100.28; t=207.58; t=241.55. :-) Nick Cox > Good question. I decided to do some timings to support -- or rebut -- my > feeling that -count- which just counts should be faster than -summarize, > meanonly- which does other stuff too and in turn than -summarize- which does > other stuff too. But although that's the order the timings are closer than I > guessed. Still, doing anything the quickest way does no harm and may give > valuable speed-up for large problems. > > Here is one test script. Compare your experiences: > > clear > set obs 100000 > set seed 2803 > gen y = runiform() > set rmsg on > > qui forval i = 1/10000 { > count if y > 0.5 > } > > qui forval i = 1/10000 { > su y if y > 0.5, meanonly > } > > qui forval i = 1/10000 { > su y if y > 0.5 > } > > My timings were t=187.49; 254.49; 313.38, which no doubt shows up the > Mesolithic age of my machine. > > Nick > n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk > > Martin Weiss > > " As a small detail of efficiency, I would always recommend -count- rather > than -summarize- for the purpose here." > > My earlier code did use -count-... What makes this thing more efficient, > though? Both are built-in, so they probably enjoy a big advantage over > everybody else anyway. So I guess the reason for your preference is the fact > that -count- calculates fewer results than -su, mean-? > * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/