To expand on a few points:
1. The -egen- route is naturally fine whenever it
offers the statistic you want to keep. Note that
when you go
by person : egen mean = mean(whatever)
That mean will be repeated for every observation
for each person. For many purposes you will want
to use each mean just once. Tagging is one way to
do that
egen tag = tag(person)
tags just one observation for each person. Then
you can follow up with
... if tag
If you look inside the -mean()- function you
will see that it does not use -summarize-.
2. -statsby- is what I call a reduction command.
You will get one observation for each person, in your
problem, i.e. you will lose the existing dataset.
Roger Newson's set of commands is another
example of a reduction approach.
3. Doing it yourself with a loop is not too
difficult, but you must loop over groups at
a minimum. One FAQ which may be of help is
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/foreach.html
Persons will have integer or string identifiers,
so using -levels- is often effective. Taking
your program
> program mean_get
> syntax [varlist]
> foreach i of local varlist {
> generate overall2 = 0
> by name, sort: summarize `i', meanonly
> local 1 = r(mean)
> by name, sort: replace overall2 = `1'
> }
> end
let's forget that -egen- exists and write a program
that puts means of a varlist into variables -mean_*-
for a division by some required variable.
program mean_get
* NJC after Clint Thompson 13 April 2004
version 8
syntax varlist(numeric), by(varname)
// check new names will be OK
foreach v of local varlist {
confirm new var mean_`v'
}
// this will fail if `by' is not categorical
qui levels `by', local(B)
capture confirm numeric var `by'
local isstr = _rc != 0
qui foreach v of local varlist {
gen mean_`v' = .
if `isstr' {
foreach b of local B {
su `v' if `by' == `"`b'"', meanonly
replace mean_`v' = r(mean) if `by' == `"`b'"'
}
}
else {
foreach b of local B {
su `v' if `by' == `b', meanonly
replace mean_`v' = r(mean) if `by' == `b'
}
}
}
end
I added a bit more checking. There is still much that
could be added e.g. support for -if- and -in-.
Nick
[email protected]
Michael Blasnik
> most directly:
>
> by name: egen overall2=mean(`i')
>
> will put the mean of var `i', calculated for each value of name, in
> overall2. Of course, this value will still be overwritten by
> the next var
> in the varlist if your loop is left as shown.
>
> More specifically, when you use constructs such as -by x:
> summ y- , you
> can't get at the individual results -- it's quite frustrating
> when you first
> discover this. Instead you either have to write your own loop across
> groups, or else you may be able to use an -egen- function or
> -statsby- (or
> perhaps -parmby-).
[email protected]
> > Is there a way to save the mean in r() for each value of a
> > variable? More specifically, I want the mean for each
> > different person contained within the variable 'name'. My
> > programming experience in Stata is quite limited so I'd
> > appreciate any advice; the shrapnel from my attempt at coding
> > is pasted below:
> >
> > program mean_get
> > syntax [varlist]
> > foreach i of local varlist {
> > generate overall2 = 0
> > by name, sort: summarize `i', meanonly
> > local 1 = r(mean)
> > by name, sort: replace overall2 = `1'
> > }
> > end
> >
> > When I run this, it returns the mean from the last value in
> > 'name' and uses it to replace all values of 'overall2'. Any
> > suggestions?
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