Re: st: Stata 11 Mac crashes

[jpitblado@stata.com (Jeff Pitblado, StataCorp LP)]

Ulrich Atz <u.atz@lse.ac.uk> is using -margins- after -mlogit-, but Stata
crashes in the middle of the -margins- command execution:

> I can produce a crash with the following command (all dummy variables) after
> a multinomial logit regression:
> 
> margins i.us#i.highed#i.highrelig#(i.us#i.highrel), at(age=50)
> 
> This one for example works -margins
> (i.us#i.highed#i.highrelig)#i.us#i.highrel, at(age=50)-, though not as I
> intend. (The idea was to interact the first three dummies with an
> interaction term.)
> 
> I know this is very little information and that the syntax may actually be
> wrong, but I suppose an error would be more appropriate than a crash. I use
> Stata/IC 11.1 for Mac (64-bit Intel).
> 
> If the statalist is not the right place to report bugs, I apologise.

We have determined that the crash is caused by more than one duplicate
variable specified in an interaction; parentheses control the parsing order
and can prevent the crash.

This will be fixed in the next executable update.


In the mean time Ulrich can avoid the crash by specifying a given factor
variable only once per interaction.

For example, Ulrich's example was

	. margins i.us#i.highed#i.highrelig#(i.us#i.highrel), at(age=50)

The duplicate variables are 'i.us' and 'i.highrelig', and the parentheses add
nothing to this interaction specification.  The above syntax is equivalent to

	. margins i.us#i.highed#i.highrelig, at(age=50)


In a side note Ulrich said:

> (The idea was to interact the first three dummies with an interaction term.)

If Ulrich meant to separately interact each of the dummies with another term,
then the following syntax might be what Ulrich wants:

	. margins (us highed)#highrelig, at(age=50)

This is a shorthand notation for

	. margins us#highrelig highed#highrelig, at(age=50)

If Ulrich meant to compute the margins for each dummy in addition to their
interaction with another term, then Ulrich can type:

	. margins (us highed)##highrelig, at(age=50)

This is a shorthand notation for

	. margins i.us i.highed i.highrelig us#highrelig highed#highrelig, at(age=50)

--Jeff
jpitblado@stata.com
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