A general issue is quite how difficult Stata is to pick up.
One thing we do see, or at least I sense, on Statalist repeatedly is
people who are diving into Stata head first and it seems hardly reading
_anything_, help, manuals, books, etc., etc., before they ask their
questions.
There are of course several dimensions to this, ranging from "Life is
short, and my thesis is due in next week" through "Yes, Stata is
confusing, if you expect it to be like Excel/SAS/<whatever>" to "I have
no manuals accessible to me".
Without pretending to a full analysis, I make one brief comment:
This may be a one good way to learn something, but let's not swallow
complaints about the obscurity of Stata too readily when the real issue
is sometimes the lack of willingness to do some hard work in
learning....
Nick
[email protected]
Martin Weiss
This thread is a tough reminder,
though, of the difficulties that can sometimes seem insurmountable for
beginners in Stata.
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