In my previous response to Mike's question, I forgot to answer two questions.
> 1. What does "xx...x..xx" mean in Stata10?
By default, -bootstrap- displays dots as a means of showing its progress
throught the replications. Occasionally you'll run into an "x" in the list of
dots. The "x" means that the prefixed command (-xthtaylor- in Mike's case)
failed for some reason. Results from failed replications are not used in
variance estimation.
We suspect that the source for Mike's failed regression are due to
collinearity, -xthtaylor- is omitting different variables in some of the
replications compared to the original model fit.
Mike can use -bootstrap-'s -noisily- option to see what is causing the
failures in these replications.
> 3. What is the difference between "dropping" and "omitting" a variable due
> to collinearity?
Substantively there is no difference. Stata 11 omits collinear variables from
the model instead of dropping them from the list of covariates. This is the
same as constraining the coefficient to zero. The "o." operator identifies
the omitted variables, and the regressiong table reports them as '(omitted)'
by default.
This change of behavior is largely motivated by the new factor variables
features in Stata 11. The base levels of factor variables remain part of the
list of covariates.
--Theresa Boswell --Jeff Pitblado
<[email protected]> [email protected]
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