Re: st: changing number of observations

[Ronnie Babigumira <rb.glists@gmail.com>]

Hard to say without looking at your code. That said, you mention two things that could result in a loss of observations

1. Cleaning. Are you just flagging or dropping suspect cases
2. Merging. -merge- has the option of keeping perfect merges and discarding the stuff that does not merge.

Since you are surprised by the number of observations, I suspect you have not written in anything to reduce the number 
of observations. I would look at the merge commands (count the observations before and after), or if anything in your 
code -keep-s or -drop-s stuff



Moore, Jesse wrote:

> I have a large do file that I've created to clean a dataset.  It
> includes some merging as well as forvalues commands.  The first line of
> code is use "filepath", clear
>
> I've run it five times now and each time there has been a different
> number of observations at the end (n=7639, 7637, 7645, 7629, and 7641)
>
> It seems that if the do file starts with the same file and does the same
> thing every time it should be returning the same observations every
> time.  Any ideas on what is happening here?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jesse Moore, MD
> General Surgery Resident
> Fletcher Allen Healthcare
> University of Vermont
> 802-847-5097
>
>
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