Merging outbreak data

[Barbara Tornimbene]

Hello!
I have a huge database with disease outbreaks entries. I need to delete entries that have the same location (lat,long) and have start dates within the same two weeks periods. I am stuck on the date range problem. Appreciate any help! Thanks

[Clyde Schechter]

You need to be clearer about what you are doing. First of all, if you have entries on the same location with dates that are within two weeks, do all the other variables in those entries have the same values? If not, then deleting some of them will discard information. Is that OK? How do you decide which one of the discrepant records to keep? The first? The last? One selected at random?

And you have a transitivity problem. If a given location has a record on days 1, 14, and 27, then 1 and 14 are within two weeks of each other, and 14 and 27 are within two weeks of each other, but 1 and 27 are not. What do you want to delete?

If you can resolve these issues, then it may be possible to figure out the code to accomplish it.