Thanks to Kit Baum, new -slideplot- and -majority-
packages are now available on SSC. Stata 8 is required
for both. As usual
. ssc desc <pkgname>
describes and
. ssc inst <pkgname>
installs <pkgname>. The first is unnecessary if you
continue reading.
-majority- is a special purpose tabulation
routine for "majority" calculations for real or
hypothetical elections.
The "votes" cast are summarized as being "positive" or "negative"
and the difference between these is reported. There are two
syntaxes. The first is for a long data structure in which votes
are recorded in a single variable. The second is for a wide data
structure in which votes are recorded in two or more variables.
The help is fairly detailed, including bibliographic details.
Similar ideas are also discussed at
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/measures.html
The idea offers a very simple (and so far as I can tell
neglected) handle for summarising graded data (binary or ordinal).
-slideplot- offers an associated graph, a sliding bar plot showing
frequencies or percents. The plot is most helpful for categorical
variables that can be ordered naturally, at least approximately.
The bar plot may be vertical or horizontal. Each bar is stacked
and each straddles zero. The frequencies or percents shown are
plotted as positive or negative.
A verbal description is no substitute for examples. At the
recent London and Dublin Stata users' group meetings,
I talked about various graphics programs for Stata 8
and the overheads for that talk are now available at
http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/usug2003/compare_gph.pdf
As I write, materials representing some 13 user talks
given at the London meeting may downloaded via
http://ideas.repec.org/s/boc/usug03.html
For those of you who didn't make London, that
should be quite a good spread with something
of real interest for, one hopes, everyone on the
list.
Kit Baum (again) is acknowledged warmly for his
efforts in setting up that site.
Nick
[email protected]
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