Speaking Stata: The largest five - A tale of tail values

Cox, Nicholas J.

Abstract

How do you work with the largest five, or smallest five, or any other fixed number of values in a tail of a distribution? In this column, I give examples of problems and code for basic calculations as a prelude to graphics, tables, and more detailed analysis. The main illustration is analysis of concentration among firms or companies, with wider discussion mentioning hydrology, climatology, cryptography, and ecology. The examples allow a tutorial covering sorting and ranking and using if and in to select observations, by: as a framework for groupwise calculations, indicator variables as a mode of selection, and egen as a Swiss Army knife with many handy functions.

Citation

Cox, N. J. (2022). Speaking Stata: The largest five - A tale of tail values. The Stata Journal, 22(2), 446-459. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x221106436

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 25, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jun 30, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Jul 28, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 28, 2022
• Journal: The Stata Journal: Promoting communications on statistics and Stata
• Print ISSN: 1536-867X
• Electronic ISSN: 1536-8734
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 446-459
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x221106436
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1199179