Re: st: Generating new variables with values of difference in 2 variables

[Hitesh Chandwani <hchandwani.stata@gmail.com>]

This works great! Thanks Nick.
This is not panel data; I'm using claims data to calculate compliance
with medications for which I need each patient to have a single row of
data (I converted the original long form to wide form data).

I have another question though:

I am interested in the first day that there was a break in medication
possession. From the date variables (disp_date1-disp_date14 OR
disp_date`k'), I need to pick out the first date of the break. In
other words, I need to pick out the first date for each patient where
variable A`k' > variable B`k'.

I've been trying for hours but I can't get Stata to do exactly what I
want. I tried -egen-, and some loops but to no avail.

Does someone have any inputs?

Hitesh


On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> forval j = 1/7 {
>     local J = `j' + 1
>     gen var`j' = day`J' - day`j'
> }
>
> or
>
> forval j = 1/7 {
>    gen var`j' = day`=`j' + 1' - day`j'
> }
>
> All that said, this sounds a very bad idea strategically. Presumably
> -day1- is what happens on day 1, and so forth, so this is time series
> or panel data. You start out with 8 day variables, then add 7
> difference variables. When this is going to stop as you add further
> analyses?
>
> Better to -reshape long-. Then you can work with one response
> variable, one set of differences, etc.
>
> Nick
>
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 4:59 PM, Hitesh Chandwani
> <hchandwani.stata@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is another query about loops. I have 8 variables day1-day8. I am
>> trying to run a loop that does:
>>
>> gen var1=day2-day1
>> gen var2=day3-day2
>> gen var3=day4-day3...and so on.
>>
>> From previous statlist emails, I found how to run loops subtracting
>> one series of variables from another
>> (http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-01/msg00303.html), but
>> I'm having a hard time trying to generate a loop where variables
>> within the same series are subtracted from each other.
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-- 
Hitesh S. Chandwani
University of Texas at Austin

*
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