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Archive for August 2012

Using Stata’s random-number generators, part 3, drawing with replacement

The topic for today is drawing random samples with replacement. If you haven’t read part 1 and part 2 of this series on random numbers, do so. In the series we’ve discussed that Read more…

Using Stata’s random-number generators, part 2, drawing without replacement

Last time I told you that Stata’s runiform() function generates rectangularly (uniformly) distributed random numbers over [0, 1), from 0 to nearly 1, and to be precise, over [0, 0.999999999767169356]. And I gave you two formulas,

  1. To generate continuous random numbers between a and b, use

    generate double u = (ba)*runiform() + a

    The random numbers will not actually be between a and b: they will be between a and nearly b, but the top will be so close to b, namely 0.999999999767169356*b, that it will not matter.

  2. To generate integer random numbers between a and b, use Read more…