# How do I find and normalize bids?

#### JohanYST

##### New Member
I am working with data that looks like this:

A
u
c
t
i B
o i
n d
d
n e
o. r Bid (\$)
1 1 45
1 2 52
1 3 42
1 4 47
2 1 10258
2 2 15243
3 1 786
3 2 549
3 3 625
3 4 724
3 5 599
3 6 685

I know its hard to see, but the first column indicates the number of the auction, the second column indicates which bidder that has the bid that is presented in the third column.

This shows that the auction has multiple bids, and which bidder has what bid. Each bidder can only put one closed bid in each auction.

I would like to make these comparable to be able to see the spread of bids, and try to find a distribution. So if there is any way I can tell Stata to:

1. Find the highest/lowest bid in each auction (winning bid)
2. Set this to one (1) and calculate a value for the other bids (for example bid/"winning bid")

If I manage to do this then I would be able to find a censored distribution and see the cumulated spread of bids, right?

#### zerostin

##### New Member
for question 1 you could do something like:

Code:
sort auction
by auction: summarize bid
Don't know what you exactly mean with the second question.

#### JohanYST

##### New Member
Thank you for your reply. For question 2 I want to make the bids comparable between auctions.

So if for example the lowest bid in auction 1 is assigned a value of 1, the remaning bids in auction 1 should be assigned a value relative to the winning bid.

For example:
(second runner up bid/winning bid) =1,something

And if I do the same thing for all auctions, I end up with alot of values for the bids which are comparable between auctions since the value for the bids are assigned a value relative to the winning bid in their own auction.

In this way I would be able to see the spread of the bids relative to the winning bid.