st: computation across rows

[Hewan Belay <hewan_belay@yahoo.com>]

Dear Statalist,

I am trying to do something I expected to be very simple, but I'm not finding a 
straightforward way to do this. Essentially, I would like to do discrete 
computations across rows/observations (ie within variables). Here is an example 
of what I mean, consider this toy dataset (I hope the table is easily visible):

id       Y    Z    W
81       4    1    3
82       .     0    9
85      2     4    1
87      3     1     4
89      6     2    5

For the id #82, I want the variables Y and W to take on the value that results 
when adding their respective values for IDs #85 and 89. In the above toy 
example, that means that the missing value would become an 8, and the value of 9 
would change to 6. I definitely don't want to xpose or reshape my data, as I 
have several other operations I am doing on the data given its current 
structure. 


So generally speaking, my question is how to do computations across selected 
rows. I only have info on this with regard to computations X rows above or 
beyond the concerned row, that is using the operation [n+1], or when getting 
statistics for groups of rows using the -by- command.

Many thanks for any insights!
Hewan



      

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