st: Re: RE: Issue with rounding

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

...
I think they want to know when a variable becomes constant for the remaining 
observations within a group, even if it is not constant for the whole group. 
If that is correct, then they might try:

gsort id -date
by id: gen sameaslast=sum(var==var[1])==_n

Which should flag observations which are the same as all of the remaining 
observations within a given id.

Michael Blasnik

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 7:42 AM
Subject: st: RE: Issue with rounding



> The way to solve these problems is to avoid them.
> Your problem is to check something, not to
> calculate something.
>
> The most direct way to see whether values of
> -some- variable remain constant in groups of
> -block- is
>
> bysort block (some) : assert some[1] == some[_N]
>
> If there is any difference between values, this
> will show up as a difference between the first (smallest)
> and the last (largest). Conversely, if all values are
> the same, the first and last will also be the same.
>
> Nick
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
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