using the averageif function with "<>" in STATA

[Sujaya Sircar]

I want to create a variable avgcal for a specific brand which gives the average of calories of all other brands:

Brand name Calories

Cornflakes 100
Rice krispies 50
Frosted flake 120

So for cornflakes, i should get (50+120)/2, for rice krispies (100+120))/2 and for frosted flake (100+50)/2. I need a command that will generate a column with these numbers for all the brands. Please help.

[Rich Goldstein]

if I understand correctly, this is a FAQ:

http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/da...ng-properties/

[Nick Cox]

Rich has the positive answer. In the very simplest case, with one set of observations and no missings, this would be just

su calories, meanonly 
gen ave_others = (r(sum) - calories) / (_N - 1)

Note that there is no averageif function in Stata and that <> has no special meaning in Stata

If you're assuming that everyone recognises syntax from some other software, that will be wrong!