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Re: st: How to figure out the most common value


From   Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: How to figure out the most common value
Date   Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:28:42 +0000

In statistics the most common value is called the mode. See, for example,

SJ-3-2  sg113_1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Software update for modes
        (help modes if installed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q2/03   SJ 3(2):211
        provides new option for specifying the number of modes to
        be shown

STB-50  sg113 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Tabulation of modes
        (help modes if installed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        7/99    pp.26--27; STB Reprints Vol 9, pp.180--181
        provides table of most frequent observations (modes)

which you would need to install from the Stata Journal website.

In your case, you want to look at several variables together, which
will be easier with a temporary -reshape-:

preserve
reshape long var , i(obs)
modes var, nmodes(5)
restore

But you don't need -modes-: -tab, sort- will give you the same
information, and more besides.

In your case, these look like ICD9 codes, which you may well be
holding as strings -- or at least I would advise that. -modes- is
happy with string variables, but if your problem does concern string
variables, it would have been better to state that, as some solutions
may presume numeric variables.

Nick

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Dudekula, Anwar <[email protected]> wrote:

> I am working on a dataset with varaibles/values as shown below.
>
> Is there a stata code which can tell me the top 5 most common values  occuring among the
> all the variables (var1-var)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Observation   var1 var2 var3 var4   var5
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Observation1  560.9 596.1 568 . 305.1
> Observation2  355.8 441.4 496 . 530.81
> Observation3  530.81 . . .
> Observation4  568 530.81 . 414
> Observation5  701.9 565.1 . .
> Observation6  714 . 530.81 493.9 729.1
> Observation7  564 . 305.1 789.04 .
>

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