Re: st: Global command to format output

[Roger Newson <roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk>]

At 14:35 18/11/02 +0000, Clive Payne wrote:
> I'm a new Stata user. While I'm very impressed with the range of statistical
> models which can be fitted in Stata and its programmability, I'm less 
> impressed with the formatting of the standard modelling output (although I 
> must admit to only having used regress so far). Often there is a spurious 
> accuracy with too many significant digits in the output and decimal points 
> are not often alligned. So my question is:
>
> is there a GLOBAL way of setting/resetting the number of significant 
> digits and the number of digits after the decimal point?
>
> (I could do this in Glim 25 years ago!)
As Nick Cox says, the short answer is no. However, I myself usually get 
around this by using the -parmest- package, downloadable from SSC. (Type 
-ssc desc parmest- or -net search parmest- to find out more.) -parmest- 
creates output data sets with one observation per estimated parameter, or 
one observation per estimated parameter per by-group, and data on parameter 
estimates, confidence limits, P-values and other parameter attributes 
specified by the user. Once the user has such a data set in the memory, 
s/he can type something like

format estimate min95 max95 %8.2f
format p %8.1e
list parm estimate min95 max95 p

and have a listing of the parameter estimates to 2 decimal places, and the 
P-values in scientific notation (as P-values should be). It is also 
possible for users to do other tricks, like confidence interval plots for 
immediate impact in a presentation, which is ideally done using Nick Cox's 
very useful -hplot- command (type -ssc describe hplot- or -net search hplot-).

A tutorial on the use of the -parmest- package, containing some fairly 
advanced examples, can be found in the website of  the 2002 UK Stata User 
Meeting at

http://ideas.repec.org/s/boc/usug02.html

where it can be downloaded. However, users are warned that some of the 
examples presented will now cause -parmest- to report an error, because 
-parmest- now requires the user to specify at least one of the options 
-saving-, -norestore- and/or -fast-, in order to specify whether s/he wants 
the output data set to be stored in a disk file, written to the memory 
(overwriting pre-existing data), or both. For these examples to work as 
presented, the user should specify the -norestore- option.

I hope this helps.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
5th Floor, Capital House
42 Weston Street
London SE1 3QD
United Kingdom

Tel: 020 7848 6648 International +44 20 7848 6648
Fax: 020 7848 6620 International +44 20 7848 6620
  or 020 7848 6605 International +44 20 7848 6605
Email: roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk

Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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