Re: st: RE: drop variables in panel data with loop

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Djalal's code can be simplified to

drop if t==.

as whether t is missing does not depend on its relation to other
variables. So, it drops observations which are missing on -t-, which
is not your problem.

However, Lisa overlooks my earlier posting

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-07/msg00776.html

I got a bit lost in Lisa's explanation (for example further variables
-twindow- and -holidaywindow- appear without any explanation) but my
solution should still be relevant. Another solution might be

bysort i (window) : drop if window[_N] == 1

Nick

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Lisa Wang <lhwang0925@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Djala,
>
> Thank you for your help.
>
> I have tried your recommendation but it does not delete any
> observations from my data set at all.
>
> Maybe I didn't specify my query well enough. If there are missing
> observations within a particular period, which is denoted by a dummy
> variable 'window', then drop ALL the observations pertaining to that
> person - not only the rows that have missing observations.
>
> Would you have any other suggestions?
>
> Kind regards,
> Lisa
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 1:11 AM, Arinloye Djalal <aridjal@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Lisa,
>> Have you tried the following syntax?
>>
>> by i, sort : drop if t==.
>>
>> This will allow you have t variable without any missing observation.
>> As you have already distinguished wish people/rows are concerned you can
>> manually drop them from data editor.
>>
>> Hope this can hope.
>>
>>
>> Djalal Arinloye
>>
>>
>> -----Message d'origine-----
>> De : owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
>> [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] De la part de Lisa Wang
>> Envoyé : Sunday, July 22, 2012 12:51 PM
>> À : statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
>> Objet : st: drop variables in panel data with loop
>>
>> I am having trouble with Stata and would like some guidance on what I
>> am doing incorrectly. I am new to Stata (only 1 month into it), so I
>> am still trying to learn and sometimes still thinking like in Excel.
>>
>> I will try to be as detailed as possible, so you can understand my question.
>>
>> To describe my data set, I have some panel data and a variable i,
>> which is the names (eg. Mary, Tom...) but encoded into a numeric as
>> such: - encode symbol1, generate (i) -. There are 59732 rows and the
>> count of i is 30.
>>
>> What I would like to achieve is to tell the program to drop the
>> observations that have missing values for a variable for a specific
>> period (variable window). E.g. If there is no data for "Mary" for day
>> 102 then drop all the rows pertaining to "Mary"  from day 1...T - not
>> only drop the the observation for Mary on day 102.
>>
>> This is my code to try to achieve this:
>>
>> version 12.1
>> clear all
>> set more off
>>
>> cd "C:\Users\Admin\Desktop"
>>
>> use window_students, clear
>>
>> xtset i t
>> //check panel structure is correct
>>
>>
>> summ i   // this tells me that the max of variable i is 30, which is
>> correct as I have 30 people I need to analyse
>>
>> tabulate i t if window==1 & r==.
>>   //r is another variable stored in another column, which represents
>> their rates. There are 8 people that don't have any rates within my
>> window.
>> ///I would like to remove all the observations pertaining to these peopl
>>
>> levelsof i if window==1 & r==., local(entities)        //tried to
>> store the people that were missing into a local macro - these are i =
>> 2 4 6 7 9 14 21 25
>>
>>
>>
>> Then I tried this:
>>
>> *Method 1 - but then results window has return code 198 and invalid
>> '4' in red text
>>
>> foreach i of local entities{
>> drop if i==`entities'
>> }
>>
>>
>> *Method 2 - but then results window has return code 111 and variable i not
>> found
>>
>> foreach i of local entities{
>> drop i
>> }
>>
>> *Method 3 - but it deleted all of my observations
>>
>> foreach i of local entities{
>> drop i
>> }
>>
>> *Method 4 - after Stata told me that it was person 2,4, 6, 7, 9 etc...
>> that were missing observations I wrote out each line
>>
>> drop if i==2
>> drop if i==4   //etc.....
>>
>> summ i            // I still get 30 in the summary but it has told me
>> that it has deleted observations for each drop if line that I
>> used....shouldn't it be 22 now after I removed the 8 people?
>>
>>
>>
>> I am stuck now...as I need the i to be correct as I will be doing some
>> regressions with the i later, that's why I have to drop the people
>> that don't have observations in my dataset before I do further
>> analysis.
>>
>> eg.
>> summarize i
>> local m = r(max)
>> //create a local macro storing the max
>> number of distinct entities from an r-scalar
>>
>> generate ar = .
>>
>>
>>
>>         forvalues x = 1/`m' {
>> //run regression for every entity in data set
>>                 regress r ind if i==`x' & twindow
>>
>>                 predict res if i==`x', residuals
>> //predict residuals both
>> in-sample and out-of-sample
>>                 replace ar=res if i==`x' & holidaywindow
>> //replace ar=. with thes
>> estimated residuals
>>                 drop res
>> }
>>
>>
>>
>> Sorry for the long email. This is my first post, so wanted everyone to
>> be clear of what I have done so far and what I want to do next.

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