Date:         Wed, 5 Jul 2006 12:46:53 +0200
Reply-To:     Marta García-Granero
              <biostatistics@terra.es>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Marta García-Granero
              <biostatistics@terra.es>
Organization: Asesoría Bioestadística
Subject:      Generating all posibble binary patterns for m variables
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15

Hi list

I'm stuck in the middle of an "impossible?" problem. I need to create
datasets with the following characteristics:

If nvars=3:
x1 x2 x3
0  0  0
1  0  0
0  1  0
0  0  1
1  1  0
1  0  1
0  1  1
1  1  1
Total number of patterns:8

If nvars=4:
x1 x2 x3 x4
0  0  0  0
1  0  0  0
0  1  0  0
0  0  1  0
0  0  0  1
1  1  0  0
1  0  1  0
1  0  0  1
0  1  1  0
0  1  0  1
0  0  1  1
1  1  1  0
1  1  0  1
1  0  1  1
1  1  1  1
Total number of patters:16

If nvars=5:
x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
0  0  0  0  0
0  0  0  0  0
0  1  0  0  0
0  0  1  0  0
0  0  0  1  0
0  0  0  0  1
1  1  0  0  0
1  0  1  0  0
1  0  0  1  0
1  0  0  0  1
0  1  1  0  0
0  1  0  1  0
0  1  0  0  1
0  0  1  1  0
0  0  1  0  1
0  0  0  1  1
1  1  1  0  0
1  1  0  1  0
1  1  0  0  1
1  0  1  1  0
1  0  1  0  1
1  0  0  1  1
0  1  1  1  0
0  1  1  0  1
0  1  0  1  1
0  0  1  1  1
1  1  1  1  1
Total number of patters:32

General rule: the patterns are all the posible combinations of 0/1
values (total possible patterns: 2^nvars).

I would ideally need a MACRO to compute them for up to 15 variables.

Years ago I did it with a BASIC program (for eight variables), but I
had the advantage of being able to extract bits from a byte, and the
code was very easy: computing with a loop numbers form 1 to 256, and
extracting eight variables with the value of every bit that formed the
byte.

I don't know how to handle it with SPSS :(

No need to hurry, tomorrow I'm leaving for 12 days (trying again the
also impossible task of getting a tan, I happen to have a very low
phototype).

Regards

Marta