st: Re: Identify 5 closest observations of a variable

[Gordon Hughes <G.A.Hughes@ed.ac.uk>]

This seems to be a slightly bizarre exercise and I doubt that there 
is any simple solution.  However, for a brute force method consider 
the following.

Assume that you have sorted the data on region & var1 (as in your 
example).  What you are trying to do is (a) to identify a window of 6 
observations s ... s+5 (s <= t <= s+5) for which the sum{var1[s .. 
s+5]} minus 6*var1[t] is minimised, and (b) to calculate sum{var2[s 
.. s+5]}-var2[t].  You need to write the code to process each region 
separately and then be sure that you get the special cases at the 
beginning and end of each regional sample correct - i.e. for t=1 
(within the region), s must be 1; for t=N (the last observation), s=t-5; etc.

It is not difficult but it is tedious to program because of all the 
special cases, so it will only be worthwhile if your dataset is large 
enough.  You should document carefully what you have done because 
there is a large risk of making mistakes and/or being unable to 
replicate your results.

Gordon Hughes
g.a.hughes@ed.ac.uk

================================

Dear Statalisters,

The data below shows three variables:- region, var1 and var2. For each
observation in a given region, I want the 5 closest observations based
on var1 (not counting the observation in question). I basically need
the average value of var2 for the 5 observations that are identified.
I don't have any missing values in my data for all three variables
below. I can also confirm that I have a few regions with less than 6
observations each; hence these regions will be ignored. I am using
Stata 12.

Thanks,

Joe

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