no observations r(2000);

[Guest]

Good afternoon/evening.

I am very new in Stata and I am trying to run a simple regression on some data that I have.

Variable X has 75 observations while Variable Y has 74 observations.

However, when I run the regression I get the following error:

. regress Y X
no observations
r(2000);

I already checked missing values:

. count if !missing(Y, X)
0

I will appreciate your help. Thanks a lot,

[Nick Cox]

Show us the results of

 describe Y X

Is either variable string?

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

I cannot tell for sure, but I suspect that either or both variables are actually string variables. Please report what the output of the following gives.

desc X Y

If they are strings, you will need to convert them to numeric type variables. You should go back to how you imported your data, but an on-the-fly approach is to do the following, assuming both X and Y are strings.

gen x = real(X)
gen y = real(Y)
drop X Y
reg y x

Please note that there is a convenient tool to use when asking for help on this forum. It is -dataex-. Simply type it into your Stata session, and it will give you a small snapshot of the data including any salient details that you can copy and paste into your post. We often ask for or require -dataex- output to best help people to solve their problems because much can be lost in a written description of a problem and the underlying code and data.

[Guest]

Thanks for your answers.

This is the output:

. describe Y X

Variable Storage Display Value
name type format label Variable label
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Y float %9.0g
X float %9.0g


I'll be looking forward your assistance.

Thanks again,

[Nick Cox]

dataex please

Note that

count if !missing(X, Y)
0

tells you that you have zero observations with non-missing values on X and Y, not that you have zero missing values.

[Guest]

dataex Y

----------------------- copy starting from the next line -----------------------

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input float Y
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
 51.66666
        .
       94
        .
        .
        .
 84.16667
        .
        .
        .
        .
 63.33334
        .
        .
        .
       60
        .
        .
        .
        .
 58.33334
        .
        .
     42.5
        .
75.454544
        .
    53.75
        .
        .
 66.36363
        .
        .
 74.44444
        .
        .
        .
        .
     72.5
        .
        .
 58.88889
        .
 81.66667
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
 63.33334
        .
 63.33334
        .
73.333336
        .
     87.5
        .
        .
       50
        .
 79.16666
        .
        .
 55.83334
        .
        .
        .
 60.83334
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
 59.09091
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
       80
        .
        .
        .
37.272728
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
end

------------------ copy up to and including the previous line ------------------

Listed 100 out of 341 observations
Use the count() option to list more

[Nick Cox]

That's just Y but otherwise it looks as if nothing is possible. Why so many missing values?

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

Nick is correct, these data are too sparse and nothing is possible. Perhaps the import process was mangled?