Oh I see what you are saying now. You mean
bysort year state cnum (votes) : keep if _n == _N
will sort by year state cnum votes, but the keep command ignores the votes?
wow. cool!
Thank you,
Ashim.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> That could be condensed to
>
> bysort year state cnum (votes) : keep if _n == _N
>
> -search by- points to a discursive tutorial, accessible to all:
>
> SJ-2-1 pr0004 . . . . . . . . . . Speaking Stata: How to move step
> by: step
> Q1/02 SJ 2(1):86--102 (no
> commands)
> explains the use of the by varlist : construct to tackle
> a variety of problems with group structure, ranging from
> simple calculations for each of several groups to more
> advanced manipulations that use the built-in _n and _N
>
> The important thing is that the parentheses notation is _not_ cosmetic
> here.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> Ashim Kapoor
>
> I made a "silly" mistake. I realized it only some time ago.
>
> What I wanted to do was : -
>
> sort year state cnum votes
>
> and then ONLY do
>
> by year state cnum : keep if _n==_N
>
> This would bring out the item with the max no of votes in a year in a
> state in a contituency.
>
> I erred and thought that I should do by year state cnum VOTE : keep if
> _n==_N.
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Neil Shephard and Martin Weiss made helpful comments.
>>
>> My guess is that what Ashim needs is
>>
>> bysort year state cnum (votes) : keep if _n == _N
>>
>> except that his report "I have ." leads me to guess that he has
> missing
>> values, which would be problematic with that code.
>>
>> Missing values are sorted to the end of any block of observations, as
>> they are treated as arbitrarily large. So missing values will show up
> in
>> the kept data for every constituency (if that is what -cnum- indexes)
>> for which they exist.
>>
>> Even if this guess is correct, it raises two questions.
>>
>> 1. Why does Ashim have missings? Are they something else, e.g. zeros?
> If
>> so, they should be fixed.
>>
>> 2. If the missings are genuine, they need to be fixed before
> -sort-ing.
>> Ashim's purpose seems to call for
>>
>> drop if missing(votes)
>>
>> Also -search dropmiss-.
>>
>> Nick
>> [email protected]
>>
>> Ashim Kapoor
>>
>> I want to do the following :
>>
>> sort year state cnum votes
>>
>> by year stata cnum votes : keep if _n==_N
>>
>> That way I get the guy with the max no of votes.
>>
>> Now when I do this for 1 or 2 arguments for by then it works, but not
>> for 4 arguments I have . Does by have a limit on how many arguments it
>> can have ?
>>
>> I read -help by- and that does mention using by in the following
>> fashion : -- > by year ( state) . Do I need to put in brackets for the
>> other arguments?
>>
>> Could someone please clarify?
>
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