Hi everyone,

I am struggling to generate random points around a fixed point (defined by latitude and longitude) in Stata.

Here is a snapshot of data:

Code:
* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input int _ID double(_CX _CY) float points
111  181.0026701446173  -103.6144711763335 2
 35 179.83644482349095 -102.25931438232391 2
 95 173.62410139032926 -108.25203422744671 7
120   176.696210689136  -109.6219042419326 2
126 177.62000961513976 -109.32669927586673 4
 21  178.2751472150729 -104.06769361471842 4
 18 175.99721564981806 -108.14985411307012 4
 60   178.872501415726 -102.72883884892121 3
119 176.90713462711736 -109.26361044014674 1
 20 178.09477094181506  -105.2803015017441 5
 40 176.37581822494718 -107.06071352670077 2
 36  176.2594233462089 -105.51304940173509 3
 34 178.38042942412704 -102.75056129345269 2
 69 176.36218391402446 -106.42921144019289 3
 97 175.82515586054384 -104.95031844141755 3
 51  172.8322553280801 -108.84294571923179 8
 77 175.52420409001067 -105.79796467844942 5
  3 174.49476863694187 -108.68563432712384 8
 25 178.91401313578396  -102.5597069872018 1
 14 179.57927904199687 -103.20172421743248 4
end
I was able to generate random points, however, they seems to be very far apart and mixed with other centroids. I am latter using these random points in the grmap command for choropleth mappping. I used the following following codes.

Code:
expand points
gen y = _CY + runiform(0, .1)
gen x = _CX + runiform(0, .1)
scatter y x,msize(.5)
Some of these points are good to go, but some were not identifiable with respect to its centroids.
Does anyone know how to drawn these random number in a circle around the centroids(lat,long in data) that does not get mixed with other points in the data.

Thanks and appreciation.