Michael N. Mitchell - A visual guide to Stata graphics

A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics

Fourth Edition

MICHAEL N. MITCHELL

A Stata Press Publication
StataCorp LLC
College Station, Texas

Copyright 2004, 2008, 2012, 2022 by StataCorp LLC
All rights reserved. First edition 2004
Second edition 2008
Third edition 2012
Fourth edition 2022

Published by Stata Press, 4905 Lakeway Drive, College Station, Texas 77845

Typeset in LaTeX2e

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Print ISBN-10: 1-59718-365-2

Print ISBN-13: 978-1-59718-365-9

ePub ISBN-10: 1-59718-366-0

ePub ISBN-13: 978-1-59718-366-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951939

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I dedicate this book to the teachers of the world. I have been fortunate to have been touchedby many special teachers, and I will always be grateful for what they kindly gave to me. I thank(in order of appearance) Larry Grossman, Fred Perske, Rosemary Sheridan, Donald Butler, JimTorcivia, Richard OConnell, Linda Fidell, and Jim Sidanius. These teachers all left me gifts ofknowledge and life lessons that help me every day. Even if they do not all remember me, I willalways remember them.

When I was writing the first edition of this book, we all pictured a book printed in black andwhite. All the other books in the Stata Press catalog were in black and white. As thebook was nearing completion, Stata Press found a printer who could print the book infull color. The book was nearly donenearly done in black and white. I took a hardswallow, and we agreed that even though it would take extra time and rethinking parts ofthe book from scratch, the book should be in color. Seeing all the features that Statahas added for supporting colors, I find it hard to imagine this book any other way.This new edition goes all in on the features that Stata offers for displaying colors. Inthe third edition, the section on color styles had five examplesthat section in thisnew edition includes over 50 examples [see Styles : Colors (section )]. Instead oftrying to explain the look of colors at different intensities and opacities, I show youcommands and graphs that illustrate different colors shown at differing intensities and usingdiffering opacities. Further, I illustrate how these options interact when regions withdifferent colors are overlaid atop each other. You can play with these examples to exploreother combinations of colors/intensities/opacities, either alone or when overlapping oneanother.

In addition to the new coverage of colors, this new edition details the methods you can use forsizing objects, showing the three ways of sizing objects using absolute units (like points, inches,and centimeters) and the three ways you can size objects using relative units (such as usingkeywords like large , multipliers of the original size like *2 , or sizes relative to the size of thegraph, like 5rs ). Each of these units is illustrated in the context of sizing differentelements, such as text [like titles, axis labels, marker labels, legends, and so on; see Styles : Textsize (section ) illustrates resizing the entiregraph and the different results you obtain when individual elements are sized using relative unitsversus absolute units.

If you have used prior editions of the book, you may notice that this edition no longer includesa chapter on the Graph Editor and that the examples focus exclusively on the use of commandsfor creating graphs. This is not a commentary about the utility of the Graph Editor, but instead areflection that this book was getting too large and that Stata has a growing libraryof video tutorials that interactively show how to create and modify graphs via theStata interface. In section , I describe the utility of the interactive point-and-click interface for creating and modifying graphs and suggest videos I think illustrate key features.

The overall look of this book is dramatically different from the prior edition. The prior editions periodically changed the schemes to introduce novelty and pizzazz and to underscore how powerful schemes are for controlling the entire look of your graph. This new edition uses one common scheme and changes the scheme only when there is a rationale for choosing one scheme over another. With schemes in mind, the heart of section Standard options : Schemes (section ) shows three different kinds of graphs, one at a time, illustrating the look of that graph using selected schemes that ship with Stata, schemes included with this book, and several schemes from the worldwide Stata community.

Writing this fourth edition book was a great pleasure, especially for the respite it gave during such difficult and turbulent times. I deeply hope that this book finds you happy, healthy, andmost of allsafe.

Ventura, California December 2021

This third edition updates the second edition of this book, reflecting new features available inStata version 12. Since version 10, Stata has added several new graphical features, including acommand for creating contour plots, options that give you greater control over the displayof text, and the ability to create graphs from the results of the margins command.Additional sections have been added to this third edition that illustrate these newfeatures.

A new section has been added that illustrates the use of the twoway contour command; see Twoway : Contour (section ).

This third edition also includes minor updates here and there to bring the text up to date foruse with Stata version 12.

Simi Valley, CaliforniaDecember 2011