Coercion. It’s the topic of the day, and a short topic at that. Coercion is the leading driver for Excel usage for most Stata users. Workbook linkage is usually a pain – the practice of linking one cell from a workbook to a different cell in another workbook – and can turn a relatively simple task into a nightmare usually ending the job with a headache and a stiff drink.
However, with a few simple Mata commands, the crisscross of equal signs, dollar signs, and formulas can turn a repetitive task into a few simple copy-and-paste commands. There is also less room for error. For fun, we'll do this entire thing in Mata. First, we need to decide how many observations/variables we need. Let’s look at our current workbook and target workbook.
So we need 5 columns and 7 rows, with columns from D to H and rows from 3 to 9 in our BookB set. Write it:
mata: st_addobs(7) st_addvar("str255", "v" :+ strofreal(1..5))
Starting with a blank dataset, add seven observations. From there, we create 5 variables (v1 v2 v3 v4 v5) that are all of type str255. This is a placeholder value for long equations. The second part of this command “v” :+ strofreal(1..5) is my favorite part about Mata. The colon operator (:+) is an element-wise operator that is super helpful. No more Matrix conformability errors (well maybe a few). It creates the matrix: ("v1", "v2", "v3", "v4", "v5") without much work and allows for any number of variables! Sidenote – changing (1..5) to (1..500000) took about 3 seconds to create 500,000 v#’s. Next, let’s set up our workbook name: bookname = "'C:\Users\wmmatsuo\Desktop\[BookB.xlsx]Linked'!" Specify the location of the workbook with the file name in square brackets and enclose the sheet name in apostrophes. End that expression with an exclamation point! Since we know we want D through H, and cells 3-9, we can write the following: cols = numtobase26(4..8) rows = strofreal(3::9) numtobase26() turns 4 through 8 into D through H. For more information see my previous post on its inverse. The rows variable is a column vector containing values 3 through 9. Now it’s time to build our expression: expr = "=" :+ bookname :+ "$" :+ J(7, 1, cols) :+ "$" :+ rows We put an equals sign in front of everything so that Excel will know we’re calling an equation. Follow that with the workbook name. If you didn’t know, dollar signs in excel will lock your formulas so they don’t move when you copy formulas from one cell to another. We’ll put those in as well. The next part, J(7, 1, cols), takes our column letters and essentially repeats it seven rows down. Thanks to the colon operator, we just have to add another dollar sign to all elements of the matrix and our row numbers. Since the new cols matrix contains seven rows, and our row vector contains seven rows, it knows to repeat the row values for all columns. Let’s just put that matrix back into Stata and compress our variables. st_sstore(., ("v" :+ strofreal(1..5)), expr) stata("compress") end And voilà, we have a set of equations ready to copy into Excel. One quick tip: set your copy preferences so that when you copy the formulas, you won’t also copy variable names by going to edit->preferences->data editor-> uncheck “Include variable names on copy to clipboard”. Now just copy the equations directly from your Stata browse window into Excel, and enjoy those sweet results! In other news, this post built upon the putexcel linking discoveries found over at belenchavez.com - who recently had her Fitbit stolen! Follow her journey to get it back on her website or on Twitter - hopefully she'll be able to coerce the thief into returning the device.
2 Comments
ks for sharing the article, and more importantly, your personal expe drience mzdcindfully using our emotions as data about our inner state and knowing when it’s better to de-escalate by taking a time out are great tools. Appreciate you reading and sharing your story since I can certainly relate and I think others can to
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1/11/2024 11:34:10 pm
Appreciate you bloogging this
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AuthorWill Matsuoka is the creator of W=M/Stata - he likes creativity and simplicity, taking pictures of food, competition, and anything that can be analyzed. Archives
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