Thanks to Kit Baum, a new -parplot- package has been
added to SSC. Stata 8 is required.
. ssc type parplot.hlp
gives a fuller description than is supplied below,
while
. ssc inst parplot
installs the package.
-parplot- draws parallel coordinates plots.
Each variable is plotted on a separate vertical or
horizontal scale and the values for each observation
are shown by connected line segments.
Such plots have a long history under various guises.
When I was a student a variant was used without fuss to show
the results of series of rowing races at my university,
but they appear to be among tools widely promoted
with a great deal of hoopla under banners such as
"visualisation" and "data mining".
Wegman (1990) gave a definitive account for a
statistical readership.
John Gleason wrote -parcoord- for Stata 4 and
published it in STB-29. This works very well on
Stata 4 through 7, but a program for Stata 8
is justified not only by the desire for producing
graphics similar to those of Stata 8, but also
by the fact that some things difficult or impossible
in Stata 4 are now much easier, for example, being
able to choose between vertical and horizontal axes.
John's program was a very useful starting point,
although in the event most of the code is new.
Vince Wiggins made very helpful comments.
Gleason, J.R. 1996. Graphing high-dimensional data
using parallel coordinates. Stata Technical Bulletin
29: 10-14 (STB Reprints 5: 53-60).
Wegman, E.J. 1990. Hyperdimensional data analysis using
parallel coordinates. Journal, American Statistical
Association 85: 664-675.
Nick
[email protected]
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