Re: st: Fwd: Converting weekly data of form yyyyww

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

-encode- is indifferent to the numeric or other meaning of the strings  
it maps to numeric. That's a reason why -destring- is needed.

On your main problem, it seems that most weekly data come with one of  
two definitions, that weeks start or finish on particular days of the  
week. This is the key to successful data processing of weekly data.  I  
wrote a Stata Journal Tip on week assumptions in 2010. Google for the  
reference or for Statalist posts that cite it. I intend to write more  
on this, but probably not until after the Stata Conference in San  
Diego starting tomorrow.

Nick

On 25 Jul 2012, at 15:31, Ruth Gilgenbach <rgrune@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for your quick reply.  This was helpful--I didn't realize  
> that's
> what -encode- does.
>
> I'm sure there's a more elegant solution, but something like:
>
> ******************
> gen year = substr(dates,1,4)
> destring year, replace
> gen week = substr(dates,5,2)
> destring week, replace
> gen delivery =yw(year,week)
> format %tw delivery
> *******************
> works, except for the week 53 problem.
>
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>  
> wrote:
> > Don't -encode-, -destring-,  or use -real()- directly, which avoids
> > creation of new variables. For example, -encode- would map "2009",  
> > "2010",
> > "2011" to 1,2,3, not at all what you want.
> >
> > Mapping anybody's else "weeks" onto Stata's weeks is still going to  
> > be a
> > problem, however.
> >
> >
> > On 25 Jul 2012, at 13:55, Ruth Gilgenbach <rgrune@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I have a data set with variable "dates" which are of the form  
> > > yyyyww,
> > > and I am trying to convert them to a useable format, and am having  
> > > no
> > > luck. I am running Stata 12.
> > >
> > > For example, if I use the following
> > > ************************
> > > inp str06 dates
> > > 201002
> > > 200953
> > > 201102
> > > 200935
> > > end
> > >
> > > gen delivery = weekly(dates,"YW")
> > > *************************
> > >
> > > I get the result: (4 missing values generated) rather than the  
> > > correct
> > > result.
> > >
> > > I know that the 53-week year in 2009 is also going to pose a  
> > > problem,
> > > but this problem persists even in the absence of week 53.
> > >
> > > I have also attempted to split the string into components and build
> > > the dates from these, but I receive the same problem, that missing
> > > values are generated rather than the values themselves:
> > >
> > > ******************
> > > inp str06 dates
> > > 201002
> > > 200953
> > > 201102
> > > 200935
> > > end
> > >
> > > gen year =substr(dates,1,4)
> > > encode year, generate(nyear)
> > > gen week = substr(dates,5,2)
> > > encode week, generate(nweek)
> > >
> > > gen delivery2 = yw(nyear,nweek)
> > > *********************************
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