mcaceresb/stata-gtools
Faster implementation of Stata's collapse, reshape, xtile, egen, isid, and more using C plugins
Overview
| Installation
| Examples
| Remarks
| FAQs
| Benchmarks
| Compiling
Faster Stata for big data. This packages uses C plugins and hashes to
provide a massive speed improvements to common Stata commands, including:
reshape, collapse, xtile, tabstat, isid, egen, pctile, winsor, contract,
levelsof, duplicates, unique/distinct, and more.
Faster Stata for Big Data
This package provides a fast implementation of various Stata commands
using hashes and C plugins. The syntax and purpose is largely analogous
to their Stata counterparts; for example, you can replace collapse
with gcollapse, reshape with greshape, and so on. For a
comprehensive list of differences (including some extra features!)
see the remarks below; for details and examples see the
official project page.
Quickstart
ssc install gtools
gtools, upgradeSome quick benchmarks:
NOTE: Stata 17 introduced massive speed improvements to sort and collapse.
In the MP version, in particular with many cores available, the native
collapse can be up to twice as fast. (YMMV; overall native collapses
could still be slower in some use cases.) gcollapse remains faster
in SE and older Stata versions.
Gtools commands with a Stata equivalent
| Function | Replaces | Speedup (IC / MP) | Unsupported | Extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gcollapse | collapse | -0.5 to 2 (Stata 17+); 4 to 100 (Stata 16 and earlier) | Quantiles, merge, labels, nunique, etc. | |
| greshape | reshape | 4 to 20 / 4 to 15 | "advanced syntax" | fast, spread/gather (tidyr equiv) |
| gegen | egen | 9 to 26 / 4 to 9 (+,.) | labels | Weights, quantiles, nunique, etc. |
| gcontract | contract | 5 to 7 / 2.5 to 4 | ||
| gisid | isid | 8 to 30 / 4 to 14 | using, sort |
if, in |
| glevelsof | levelsof | 3 to 13 / 2 to 7 | Multiple variables, arbitrary levels | |
| gduplicates | duplicates | 8 to 16 / 3 to 10 | ||
| gquantiles | xtile | 10 to 30 / 13 to 25 (-) | by(), various (see usage) |
|
| pctile | 13 to 38 / 3 to 5 (-) | Ibid. | ||
| _pctile | 25 to 40 / 3 to 5 | Ibid. | ||
| gstats tab | tabstat | 10 to 50 / 5 to 30 (-) | See remarks | various (see usage) |
| gstats sum | sum, detail | 10 to 20 / 5 to 10 | See remarks | various (see usage) |
(+) The upper end of the speed improvements are for quantiles
(e.g. median, iqr, p90) and few groups. Weights have not been
benchmarked.
(.) Only gegen group was benchmarked rigorously.
(-) Benchmarks computed 10 quantiles. When computing a large
number of quantiles (e.g. thousands) pctile and xtile are prohibitively
slow due to the way they are written; in that case gquantiles is hundreds
or thousands of times faster, but this is an edge case.
Extra commands
| Function | Similar (SSC/SJ) | Speedup (IC / MP) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| fasterxtile | fastxtile | 20 to 30 / 2.5 to 3.5 | Allows by() |
| egenmisc (SSC) (-) | 8 to 25 / 2.5 to 6 | ||
| astile (SSC) (-) | 8 to 12 / 3.5 to 6 | ||
| gstats hdfe | (.) | Allows weights, by() |
|
| gstats winsor | winsor2 | 10 to 40 / 10 to 20 | Allows weights |
| gunique | unique | 4 to 26 / 4 to 12 | |
| gdistinct | distinct | 4 to 26 / 4 to 12 | Also saves results in matrix |
| gtop (gtoplevelsof) | groups, select() | (+) | See table notes (+) |
| gstats range | rangestat | 10 to 20 / 10 to 20 | Allows weights; no flex stats |
| gstats transform | Various statistical functions |
(-) fastxtile from egenmisc and astile were benchmarked against
gquantiles, xtile (fasterxtile) using by().
(+) While similar to the user command 'groups' with the 'select'
option, gtoplevelsof does not really have an equivalent. It is several
dozen times faster than 'groups, select', but that command was not written
with the goal of gleaning the most common levels of a varlist. Rather, it
has a plethora of features and that one is somewhat incidental. As such, the
benchmark is not equivalent and gtoplevelsof does not attempt to implement
the features of 'groups'
(.) Other than the dated 'hdfe' command, I do not know of a stata
command that residualizes variables from a set of fixed effects. The
'hdfe' command, as far as I can tell, morphed into the 'reghdfe'
package; the latter, however, is a fully-functioning regression command,
while 'gstats hdfe' only residualizes a set of variables.
Regression models
WARNING: Regression models are in beta and are only intended as utilities
to compute coefficients and standard errors. I do not recommend their use in
production; various post-estimation commands and statistics are not availabe.
(See gstats hdfe for residualizing variables net of fixed effects.)
| Function | Model | Similar |
|---|---|---|
| gregress | OLS | regress, reghdfe |
| givregress | 2SLS | ivregress 2sls, ivreghdfe |
| gglm | IRLS | logit, poisson, ppmlhdfe |
All commands allow the user to optionally add:
absorb()for high-dimensional fixed effects absorptions.cluster()for clustering (multiple covariates assume clusters are nested).by()for regressions by group.weightsfor weighted versions. Unlike other weights,fweightsare assumed to refer to the number of observations.
Linear regression is computed via OLS (or WLS), IV regression is
computed via two-stage least squares (2SLS), and GLM (poisson or logit)
regression is computed via iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS).
See the TODO section for planned features, or the
Missing Features
section in the documentation for what is missing before the first
non-beta release.
Extra features
Several commands offer additional features on top of the massive
speedup. See the remarks section below for an overview; for
details and examples, see each command's help page:
- gcollapse
- greshape
- gquantiles
- gstats sum/tab
- gstats transform/range/moving
- glevelsof
- gtoplevelsof
- gegen
- gdistinct
- gregress
- givregress
- gglm (poisson and logit)
In addition, several commands take gsort-style input, that is
[+|-]varname [[+|-]varname ...]This does not affect the results in most cases, just the sort order.
Commands that take this type of input include:
- gcollapse
- gcontract
- gegen
- glevelsof
- gtop (gtoplevelsof)
Ftools
The commands here are also faster than the commands provided by
ftools; further, gtools commands take a mix of string and numeric
variables, which is a limitation of ftools. (Note I could not get
several parts of ftools working on the Linux server where I have
access to Stata/MP; hence the IC benchmarks.)
| Gtools | Ftools | Speedup (IC) |
|---|---|---|
| gcollapse | fcollapse | 2-9 |
| gegen | fegen | 2.5-4 (+) |
| gisid | fisid | 4-14 |
| glevelsof | flevelsof | 1.5-13 |
| hashsort | fsort | 2.5-4 |
(+) Only egen group was benchmarked rigorously.
Limitations
-
strLvariables only partially supported on Stata 14 and above;
gcollapse,gcontract, andgreshapedo not supportstrLvariabes. -
Due to a Stata bug, gtools cannot support more
than2^31-1(2.1 billion) observations. See this
issue -
Due to limitations in the Stata Plugin Interface, gtools
can only handle as many variables as the largestmatsize
in the user's Stata version. For MP this is more than
10,000 variables but in IC this is only 800. See this
issue. -
Gtools uses compiled C code to achieve it's massive increases in
speed. This has two side-effects users might notice: First, it is sometimes
not possible to break the program's execution. While this is already true
for at least some parts of most Stata commands, there are fewer opportunities
to break Gtools commands relative to their Stata counterparts.Second, the Stata GUI might appear frozen when running Gtools
commands. If the system then runs out of RAM (memory), it could look
like Stata has crashed (it may show a "(Not Responding)" message on
Windows or it may darken on *nix systems). However, the program has
not crashed; it is merely trying to swap memory. To check this is the
case, the user can monitor disk activity or monitor their system's
pagefile or swap space directly.
Acknowledgements
-
The OSX version of gtools was implemented with invaluable help from @fbelotti
in issue 11. -
Gtools was largely inspired by Sergio Correia's (@sergiocorreia) excellent
ftools package. Further, several
improvements and bug fixes have come from to @sergiocorreia's helpful comments. -
With the exception of
greshape, every gtools command has been
written almost entirely from scratch (and evengreshapeis mostly
new code). However, gtools commands typically mimic the functionality
of existing Stata commands, including community-contributed programs,
meaning many of the ideas and options are based on them (see the
respective help files for details).gtoolscommands based on
community-contributed programs include:-
gstats winsor, based onwinsor2by Lian (Arlion) Yujun -
gunique, based onuniqueby Michael Hills and Tony Brady. -
gdistinct, based ondistinctby Gary Longton and Nicholas J. Cox.
-
Installation
I only have access to Stata 13.1, so I impose that to be the minimum.
You can install gtools from Stata via SSC:
ssc install gtools
gtools, upgradeBy default this syncs to the master branch, which is stable. To install
the latest version directly, type:
local github "https://raw.githubusercontent.com"
net install gtools, from(`github'/mcaceresb/stata-gtools/master/build/)Examples
The syntax is generally analogous to the standard commands (see the corresponding
help files for full syntax and options):
sysuse auto, clear
* gstats {hdfe|residualize} varlist [if] [in] [weight], [absorb(varlist) options]
gstats hdfe hdfe_price = price, absorb(foreign rep78)
gstats residualize price mpg, absorb(foreign rep78) prefix(res_)
* gstats {sum|tab} varlist [if] [in] [weight], [by(varlist) options]
gstats sum price [pw = gear_ratio / 4]
gstats tab price mpg, by(foreign) matasave
* gquantiles [newvarname =] exp [if] [in] [weight], {_pctile|xtile|pctile} [options]
gquantiles 2 * price, _pctile nq(10)
gquantiles p10 = 2 * price, pctile nq(10)
gquantiles x10 = 2 * price, xtile nq(10) by(rep78)
fasterxtile xx = log(price) [w = weight], cutpoints(p10) by(foreign)
* gstats winsor varlist [if] [in] [weight], [by(varlist) cuts(# #) options]
gstats winsor price gear_ratio mpg, cuts(5 95) s(_w1)
gstats winsor price gear_ratio mpg, cuts(5 95) by(foreign) s(_w2)
drop *_w?
* hashsort varlist, [options]
hashsort -make
hashsort foreign -rep78, benchmark verbose mlast
* gegen target = stat(source) [if] [in] [weight], by(varlist) [options]
gegen tag = tag(foreign)
gegen group = tag(-price make)
gegen p2_5 = pctile(price) [w = weight], by(foreign) p(2.5)
* gisid varlist [if] [in], [options]
gisid make, missok
gisid price in 1 / 2
* gduplicates varlist [if] [in], [options gtools(gtools_options)]
gduplicates report foreign
gduplicates report rep78 if foreign, gtools(bench(3))
* glevelsof varlist [if] [in], [options]
glevelsof rep78, local(levels) sep(" | ")
glevelsof foreign mpg if price < 4000, loc(lvl) sep(" | ") colsep(", ")
glevelsof foreign mpg in 10 / 70, gen(uniq_) nolocal
* gtop varlist [if] [in] [weight], [options]
* gtoplevelsof varlist [if] [in] [weight], [options]
gtoplevelsof foreign rep78
gtop foreign rep78 [w = weight], ntop(5) missrow groupmiss pctfmt(%6.4g) colmax(3)
* gregress depvar indepvars [if] [in] [weight], [by(varlist) options]
gregress price mpg rep78, mata(coefs) prefix(b(_b_) se(_se_))
gregress price mpg [fw = rep78], by(foreign) absorb(rep78 headroom) cluster(rep78)
* givregress depvar (endog = instruments) exog [if] [in] [weight], [by(varlist) options]
givregress price (mpg = gear_ratio) rep78, mata(coefs) prefix(b(_b_) se(_se_)) replace
givregress price (mpg = gear_ratio) [fw = rep78], by(foreign) absorb(rep78 headroom) cluster(rep78)
* gglm depvar indepvars [if] [in] [weight], family(...) [by(varlist) options]
gglm price mpg rep78, family(poisson) mata(coefs) prefix(b(_b_) se(_se_)) replace
gglm price mpg [fw = trunk], family(poisson) by(foreign) absorb(rep78 headroom) cluster(rep78)
gglm foreign price rep78 [fw = trunk], family(binomial) absorb(headroom) mata(coefs)
gglm foreign price if rep78 > 2, family(binomial) by(rep78) prefix(b(_b_) se(_se_)) replace
* gcollapse (stat) out = src [(stat) out = src ...] [if] [if] [weight], by(varlist) [options]
gen h1 = headroom
gen h2 = headroom
local lbl labelformat(#stat:pretty# #sourcelabel#)
gcollapse (mean) mean = price (median) p50 = gear_ratio, by(make) merge v `lbl'
disp "`:var label mean', `:var label p50'"
gcollapse (iqr) irq? = h? (nunique) turn (p97.5) mpg, by(foreign rep78) bench(2) wild
* gcontract varlist [if] [if] [fweight], [options]
gcontract foreign [fw = turn], freq(f) percent(p)
* greshape wide varlist, i(i) j(j) [options]
* greshape long prefixlist, i(i) [j(j) string options]
*
* greshape spread varlist, j(j) [options]
* greshape gather varlist, j(j) value(value) [options]
gen j = _n
greshape wide f p, i(foreign) j(j)
greshape long f p, i(foreign) j(j)
greshape spread f p, j(j)
greshape gather f? p?, j(j) value(fp)
* gstats transform (stat) out = src [(stat) out = src ...] [if] [if] [weight], by(varlist) [options]
* gstats range (stat) out = src [...] [if] [if] [weight], by(varlist) [options]
* gstats moving (stat) out = src [...] [if] [if] [weight], by(varlist) [options]
sysuse auto, clear
gstats transform (normalize) price (demean) price (range mean -sd sd) price, auto
gstats range (mean) mean_r = price (sd) sd_r = price, interval(-10 10 mpg)
gstats moving (mean) mean_m = price (sd) sd_m = price, by(foreign) window(-5 5)See the FAQs or the respective documentation for a list of supported
gcollapse and gegen functions.
Remarks
Functions available with gegen, gcollapse, gstats tab
gcollapse supports every collapse function, including their
weighted versions. In addition, weights can be selectively applied via
rawstat(), and several additional statistics are allowed, including
nunique, select#, and so on.
gegen technically does not support all of egen, but whenever a
function that is not supported is requested, gegen hashes the data and
calls egen grouping by the hash, which is often faster (gegen only
supports weights for internal functions, since egen does not normally
allow weights).
Hence both should be able to replicate all of the functionality of their
Stata counterparts. Last, gstats tab allows every statistic allowed
by tabstat as well as any statistic allowed by gcollapse; the
syntax for the statistics specified via statistics() is the same
as in tabstat.
The following are implemented internally in C:
| Function | gcollapse | gegen | gstats tab |
|---|---|---|---|
| tag | X | ||
| group | X | ||
| total | X | ||
| count | X | X | X |
| nunique | X | X | X |
| nmissing | X | X (+) | X |
| sum | X | X | X |
| nansum | X | X | X |
| rawsum | X | X | |
| rawnansum | X | X | |
| mean | X | X | X |
| geomean | X | X | X |
| median | X | X | X |
| percentiles | X | X | X |
| iqr | X | X | X |
| sd | X | X | X |
| variance | X | X (+) | X |
| cv | X | X | X |
| max | X | X | X |
| min | X | X | X |
| range | X | X | X |
| select | X | X | X |
| rawselect | X | X | |
| percent | X | X | X |
| first | X | X (+) | X |
| last | X | X (+) | X |
| firstnm | X | X (+) | X |
| lastnm | X | X (+) | X |
| semean | X | X (+) | X |
| sebinomial | X | X | X |
| sepoisson | X | X | X |
| skewness | X | X | X |
| kurtosis | X | X | X |
| gini | X | X | X |
| gini dropneg | X | X | X |
| gini keepneg | X | X | X |
(+) indicates the function has the same or a very similar
name to a function in the "egenmore" packge, but the function was
independently implemented and is hence analogous to its gcollapse
counterpart, not necessarily the function in egenmore.
The percentile syntax mimics that of collapse and egen, with the addition
that quantiles are also supported. That is,
gcollapse (p#) target = var [target = var ...] , by(varlist)
gegen target = pctile(var), by(varlist) p(#)where # is a "percentile" with arbitrary decimal places (e.g. 2.5 or 97.5).
gtools also supports selecting the #th smallest or largest value:
gcollapse (select#) target = var [(select-#) target = var ...] , by(varlist)
gegen target = select(var), by(varlist) n(#)
gegen target = select(var), by(varlist) n(-#)In addition, the following are allowed in gegen as wrappers to other
gtools functions (stat is any stat available to gcollapse, except
percent, nunique):
| Function | calls |
|---|---|
| xtile | fasterxtile |
| standardize | gstats transform |
| normalize | gstats transform |
| demean | gstats transform |
| demedian | gstats transform |
| moving_stat | gstats transform |
| range_stat | gstats transform |
| cumsum | gstats transform |
| shift | gstats transform |
| rank | gstats transform |
| winsor | gstats winsor |
| winsorize | gstats winsor |
Last, when gegen calls a function that is not implemented internally
by gtools, it will hash the by variables and call egen with by
set to an id based on the hash. That is, if fcn is not one of the
functions above,
gegen outvar = fcn(varlist) [if] [in], by(byvars)would be the same as
hashsort byvars, group(id) sortgroup
egen outvar = fcn(varlist) [if] [in], by(id)but preserving the original sort order. In case an egen option might
conflict with a gtools option, the user can pass gtools_capture(fcn_options)
to gegen.
Differences and Extras
Differences from collapse
- String variables are not allowed for
first,last,min,max, etc.
(see issue 25) - New functions:
nunique,nmissing,cv,variance,select#,select-#,range,gini rawstatallows selectively applying weights.rawselectignores weights forselect(analogously torawsum).- Option
wildallows bulk-rename. E.g.gcollapse mean_x* = x*, wild gcollapse (nansum)andgcollapse (rawnansum)outputs a missing
value for sums if all inputs are missing (instead of 0).gcollapse, mergemerges the collapsed data set back into memory. This is
much faster than collapsing a dataset, saving, and merging after. However,
Stata'smerge ..., updatefunctionality is not implemented, only replace.
(If the targets exist the function will throw an error withoutreplace).gcollapse, labelformatallows specifying the output label using placeholders.gcollapse, sumcheckkeeps integer types withsumif the sum will not overflow.
Differences from reshape
- Allows an arbitrary number of variables in
i()andj() - Several option allow turning off error checks for faster execution,
including:fast(similar tofastingcollapse),unsorted
(do not sort the output),nodupcheck(allow duplicates ini),
nomisscheck(allow missing values and/or leading blanks inj), or
nochecks(all of the above). - Subcommands
gatherandspreadimplement the equivalent commands from
R'stidyrpackage. - At the moment,
j(name [values])is not supported. All values ofjare used. - "reshape mode" is not supported. Reshape variables are not saved as
part of the current dataset's characteristics, meaning the user cannot
typereshape wideandreshape longwithout further arguments to
reverse thereshape. This syntax is very cumbersome and difficult to
support;greshapere-wrote much of the code base and had to dispense
with this functionality. - For that same reason, "advanced" syntax is not supported, including
the subcommands: clear, error, query, i, j, xij, and xi. @syntax can be modified viamatch()dropmissallows dropping missing observations when reshaping from
wide to long (vialongorgather).
Differences from regression models
gregress, givregress, and gglm do not aim to replicate
the entire table of estimation results, nor the entire suite of
post-estimation results and tests, that regress (reghdfe),
ivregress 2sls (ivreghdfe), poisson (ppmlhdfe), or logit make
available. At the moment, they are considered beta software and only
coefficients and standard errors are computed.
- Results are saved either to mata (default) or copied to variables in
the dataset in memory. by()andabsorb()are allowed and can be combined.givregressdoes a small sample adjustment (small) automatically.givregressdoes not exit with error if covariates are collinear with
the dependent variable.- If the
givregressmodel is not identified, standard errors and
coefficients are set to missing instead of exiting with error. gglmruns with optionrobustautomatically.- If the
givregressmodel is not identified, standard errors and - If there are no non-linear covariates (i.e. all observations are
numerically zero) then the coefficients and standard errors are
both set to missing.
Differences from xtile, pctile, and _pctile
- Adds support for
by()(including weights) - Does not ignore
altdefwithxtile(see this Statalist thread) - Category frequencies can also be requested via
binfreq[()]. xtile,pctile, and_pctilecan be combined viaxtile(newvar)and
pctile(newvar)- There is no limit to
nquantiles()forxtile - Quantiles can be requested via
percentiles()(orquantiles()),
cutquantiles(), orquantmatrix()forxtileas well aspctile. - Cutoffs can be requested via
cutquantiles(),cutoffs(),
orcutmatrix()forxtileas well aspctile. - The user has control over the behavior of
cutpoints()andcutquantiles().
They obeyifinwith optioncutifin, they can be group-specific with
optioncutby, and they can be de-duplicated viadedup. - Fixes numerical precision issues with
pctile, altdef(e.g. see this Statalist thread, which is a very minor thing so Stata and fellow users maintain it's not an issue, but I think it is because Stata/MP gives what I think is the correct answer whereas IC and SE do not). - Fixes a possible issue with the weights implementation in
_pctile; see this thread.
Differences from egen
grouplabel options are not supported- weights are supported for internally implemented functions.
- New functions:
nunique,nmissing,cv,variance,select#,select-#,range gegenupgrades the type of the target variable if it is not specified by
the user. This means that if the sources aredoublethen the output will
be double. All sums are double.groupcreates alongor adouble. And
so on.egenwill default to the system type, which could cause a loss of
precision on some functions.- For internally supported functions, you can specify a varlist as the source,
not just a single variable. Observations will be pooled by row in that case. - While
gegenis much faster fortag,group, and summary stats, most
egen function are not implemented internally, meaning for arbitrarygegen
calls this is a wrapper for hashsort and egen.
Differences from tabstat
- Multiple groups are allowed.
- Saving the output is done via
matainstead ofr(). No matrices
are saved inr()and optionsaveis not allowed. However, option
matasavesaves the output andby()info inGstatsOutput(the object
can be named viamatasave(name)). Seemata GstatsOutput.desc()after
gstats tab, matasavefor details. GstatsOutputprovides helpers for extracting rows, columns, and levels.- Options
casewise,longstubare not supported. - Option
nototalis on by default;totalis planned for a future release. - Option
pooledpools the source variables into one.
Differences from summarize, detail
- The behavior of
summarizeandsummarize, meanonlycan be
recovered via optionsnodetailandmeanonly. These two
options are mainly for use withby() - Option
matasavesaves output andby()info inGstatsOutput,
a mata class object (the object can be named viamatasave(name)).
Seemata GstatsOutput.desc()aftergstats sum, matasavefor details. - Option
noprintsaves the results but omits printing output. - Option
tabprints statistics in the style oftabstat - Option
pooledpools the source variables and computes summary
stats as if it was a single variable. pweightsare allowed.- Largest and smallest observations are weighted.
rolling:,statsby:, andby:are not allowed. To usebypass
the optionby()display optionsare not supported.- Factor and time series variables are not allowed.
Differences from levelsof
- It can take a
varlistand not just avarname; in that case it prints
all unique combinations of the varlist. The user can specify column and row
separators. - It can deduplicate an arbitrary number of levels and store the results in a
new variable list or replace the old variable list viagen(prefix)and
gen(replace), respectively. If the user runs up against the maximum macro
variable length, add optionnolocal.
Differences from isid
- No support for
using. The C plugin API does not allow to load a Stata
dataset from disk. - Option
sortis not available. - It can also check IDs with
ifandinconditions.
Differences from gsort
hashsortbehaves as ifmfirstwas passed. To recover the default
behavior ofgsortpass optionmlast.
Differences from duplicates
gduplicatesdoes not sortexamplesorlistby default. This massively
enhances performance but it might be harder to read. Pass optionsort
(sorted) to mimicduplicatesbehavior and sort the list.
Differences from rangestat
-
Note that
gstats rangeis an alias forgstats transformthat assumes
all the stats requested are range statistics. However, it can be called
in conjunction with any other transform via(range stat ...). It was
not intended to be a replacement ofrangestatbut it can replicate some
of its functionality. -
flex_stats (reg, corr, cov) are not allowed (seegregress). -
Intervals are of the form
interval(low high [keyvar]); ifkeyvar
is missing then it is taken to be the source variable. -
Variables are not allowed in place of
loworhigh. Instead they
must be#[stat]where#is a number andstatis an optional
summary statistic; e.g.interval(-sd 0.5sd x). -
Separate interval and interval variables can be specified for each
target; e.g.gstats range (mean -3 3) x (mean -2 . time) y .... -
All statistics allowed by
gstats tabare allowed bygstats range
(exceptnuniqueorpercent). -
Options
casewise,describe, andlocalare not allowed.
Hashing and Sorting
There are two key insights to the massive speedups of Gtools:
-
Hashing the data and sorting a hash is a lot faster than sorting
the data to then process it by group. Sorting a hash can be achieved
in linear O(N) time, whereas the best general-purpose sorts take O(N
log(N)) time. Sorting the groups would then be achievable in O(J
log(J)) time (with J groups). Hence the speed improvements are largest
when N / J is largest. -
Compiled C code is much faster than Stata commands. While it is true
that many of Stata's underpinnings are compiled code, several
operations are written inadofiles without much thought given
to optimization. If you're working with tens of thousands of
observations you might barely notice (and the difference between
5 seconds and 0.5 seconds might not be particularly important).
However, with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of rows, the
difference between half a day and an hour can matter quite a lot.
Stata Sorting
It should be noted that Stata's sorting mechanism is hard to improve
upon because of the overhead involved in sorting. We have implemented a
hash-based sorting command, hashsort, which should be faster Stata's
sort for groups, but not necessarily otherwise:
| Function | Replaces | Speedup (IC / MP) | Unsupported | Extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hashsort | sort | 2.5 to 4 / .8 to 1.3 | Group (hash) sorting | |
| gsort | 2 to 18 / 1 to 6 | mfirst (see mlast) |
Sorts are stable |
The overhead involves copying the by variables, hashing, sorting the hash,
sorting the groups, copying a sort index back to Stata, and having Stata do
the final swaps. The plugin runs fast, but the copy overhead plus the Stata
swaps often make the function be slower than Stata's native sort.
The reason that the other functions are faster is because they don't deal with
all that overhead. By contrast, Stata's gsort is not efficient. To sort
data, you need to make pair-wise comparisons. For real numbers, this is just
a > b. However, a generic comparison function can be written as compare(a, b) > 0.
This is true if a is greater than b and false otherwise. To invert
the sort order, one need only use compare(b, a) > 0, which is what gtools
does internally.
However, Stata creates a variable that is the inverse of the sort variable.
This is equivalent, but the overhead makes it slower than hashsort.
TODO
Planned features:
- Things to add to gcollapse:
-
prod -
geomean pos: exclude negative numbers and zero. -
geomean abspos: ibid but take absolute value first. - Generally should you add an
absoption to everything?
-
- Flexible save options for
gregress-
predict(), includingxbande. -
absorb(fe1=group1 fe2=group2 ...)syntax to save the FE. - Choose which coefs/se to save.
-
- Improve formula documentation for summary statistics (e.g.
gini) - Internal consistency test for various parts of
gquantiles. Each
function section does cases but they should be consistent!
These are options/features/improvements I would like to add, but I don't
have an ETA for them (i.e. they are a wishlist because I am either not
sure how to implement them or because writing the code will take a long
time). Roughly in order of likelihood:
-
gregressmissing features- Non-nested multi-way clustering.
- HDFE collienar categories check.
- HDFE drop singletons.
- Detect separated observations in
gglm, family(poisson). - Guard against possible overflows in
X' X - Accelerate HDFE corner cases (e.g. very dense multi-way HDFE)
- Include quick primers on OLS, IV, and IRLS in docs.
- Some support for Stata's extended syntax in
gregress - Update benchmarks for all commands. Still on 0.8 benchmarks.
- Dropmissing vs dropmissing but not extended missing values.
- Allow keeping both variable names and labels in
greshape spread/gather - Implement
selectoverflow(missing|closest) - Add totals row for
J > 1in gstats - Improve debugging info.
- Implement
collapse()option forgreshape. - Rolling (interval) and moving options for
gregress. - Add support for binary
strLvariables. - Minimize memory use.
- Add memory(greedy|lean) to give user fine-grained control over internals.
- Create a Stata C hashing API with thin wrappers around core functions.
- This will be a C library that other users can import.
- Some functionality will be available from Stata via gtooos, api()
- Improve code comments when you write the API!
- Have some type of coding standard for the base (coding style)
- Implement
gmerge- Integration with ReadStat?
About
Hi! I'm Mauricio Caceres; I made gtools
after some of my Stata jobs were taking literally days to run because of repeat
calls to egen, collapse, and similar on data with over 100M rows. Feedback
and comments are welcome! I hope you find this package as useful as I do.
Along those lines, here are some other Stata projects I like:
-
ftools: The main inspiration for
gtools. Not as fast, but it has a rich feature set; its mata API in
particular is excellent. -
reghdfe: The fastest way to run
a regression with multiple fixed effects (as far as I know). -
stata_kernel: A Stata kernel
for Jupyter; extremely useful for interacting with Stata. -
stata-cowsay: Productivity-boosting
cowsay functionality in Stata.
License
Gtools is MIT-licensed.
./lib/spookyhash and ./src/plugin/common/quicksort.c belong to their respective
authors and are BSD-licensed. Also see gtools, licenses.

