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From | Michael Stepner <stepner@mit.edu> |
To | statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu |
Subject | st: updated package -fastxtile- in SSC |
Date | Tue, 8 Oct 2013 12:28:32 -0400 |
-fastxtile- has been updated in the SSC, with thanks to Kit Baum. fastxtile is a drop in replacement for the built-in Stata program xtile. It has the same syntax and produces identical results, but runs substantially faster. It also supports using random sampling to generate approximate quantiles at even greater speed. This update (v1.21) corrects an issue identified by fellow Statalist user, David Muller. In the previous version, a loss of numerical precision caused observations that were almost equal to quantile boundaries to sometimes hop into the adjacent quantile, generating a small discrepancy with the results of -xtile-. That issue has been fixed. The results of -fastxtile- will now match those of -xtile- exactly. (For the curious: the problem was a number being converted to a string and back, thereby being translated from binary -> decimal -> binary.) If you've already installed fastxtile, you can update it by running -adoupdate-. To install it for the first time, run -ssc install fastxtile-. Thank you to David Muller for discovering and reporting the issue! Best, Michael * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/ * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/