Re: st: Creating long, filledin dataset from two, year variables

[Adrian Stork <storkadrian@googlemail.com>]

Hi Nick,

First of all thanks for your answer! Here's a more detailed example of
my dataset where

 project_|_startdate1_| enddate1_|_doctor1_|_startdate2_|_enddate2_|
doctor2_|_startdate3 |_enddate3_|_doctor3....s60|e60|d60
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Infection 10Jan1995 03Dec2008 J.Smith 23Dec1976 12Feb2009 R.Andrews .......
Vaccine 15Feb1990 05Jun2007 A.Calvin 12Aug1988 13Sept2004 H.Hollen .......
Cancer 12Sept1987 12Dec2009 R.Jackson 14Sep1973 23Dec2006 V.Karren ........
Diabetes 05Jan1992 13Nov2007 P.Stevens 03Jan1981 17Aug2001 A.Calvin ........
Cadiol. 07Feb1977 09Mar2007 S.Devin 04Apr1985 14Jan2003  J.Smith ........

"Project" and "doctor" are strings. start and end date are float.
Sometimes the end-date is missing (".") meaning that the project is
still advised by
that doctor. Each project is mentioned only once in my dataset, so it
should be in fact my identifier,however, I do actually want to
focus on the doctors in order to see which projects one doctor had in
fact in each month and finally to count the number of projects
he had in each month. As you can see J.Smith had a project "Indection"
from 10Jan1995 until 03Dec2008 but he also had a project "Cardiol."
from 04Apr1985 until 14Jan2003 (similar case also for A.Calvin).
This means J.Smith had from 04Apr1985 until 10Jan1995 exactly one
project ("Cardiol."), from 10Jan1995 until 14Jan2003 he had two
projects
("Cardiol" & "Infection") and from14Jan2003 until 03Dec2008 again only
one project ("Infection").
This is also why I want the date to be in a panel on a monthly basis
that should be like:

Doctor |   Date   |  project1 | project2 | project3 |...
J.Smith Apr1985  Cardiol.
J.Smith May1985 Cardiol.
..         ..                 ..
J.Smith Jan1995 Cardiol   Infection
J.Smith Feb1995 Cardiol   Infection
..           ..             ..         ..
J.Smith Jan2003 Cardiol  Infection
J.Smith Feb2003             Infection
...             ..                     ..
J.Smith Dec2008             Infection
A.Calvin ...
A.Calvin ..
..

This is everything but easy. Somehow I need to bring the dates at
least into one column.
Don't make me go back to Excel - if someone has an idea, please let me know.
Thanks very much!
Adrian
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