An interesting (and perhaps unacceptable) side-effect of Nick's recasting of the variable to a scatteri/area is that the y-range was expanded down to include 30 years. What happened is that Stata's "nice tic" processor saw the lower value defined by `min' in the -scatteri- command (which was 4% lower than the minimum defined by the data in the -line- commands) and re-ranged the plot to include even more on the low end than the -yscale(yrange(`min' `max'))- option asked for, thus making this option superfluous (on the minimum side).
However, if Nick had specified the -scatteri- as:
(scatteri `max' 1915 `max' 1921, recast(area) col(emidblue*.25))
rather than
(scatteri `min' 1915 `max' 1915 `max' 1921 `min' 1921, recast(area) col(emidblue*.25))
the "nice tic" processor would not have seen `min' and would not have expanded the range (so -yscale(yrange(`min' `max'))- would have controlled the range expansion). In fact, -recast(area)- ignores the low corners of the -scatteri- and draws to the baseline, so there is no advantage to specifying the lower corners.
Thus the code (with a cosmetic tweak on the x-axis) becomes:
sysuse uslifeexp, clear
* range y variables and set buffer
summ le_male, meanonly
local min = r(min)
local max = r(max)
sum le_female, meanonly
local min = min(`min', r(min))
local max = max(`max', r(max))
local buff = (`max' - `min') * 0.04
local min = `min' - `buff'
local max = `max' + `buff'
* do plot
tw (scatteri `max' 1915 `max' 1921, recast(area) col(emidblue*.25)) ///
(line le_female year) (line le_male year) ///
(scatteri 80 1921 "WW-I & " 78 1921 "Spanish Flu" 80 1945 "Post WW-II", s(i)) ///
, legend(order(2 "males" 3 "females") ring(0) pos(4) col(1)) ///
xtitle("") ytitle("life expectancy (years)") yla(, ang(h)) ///
xli(1945, lcol(emidblue*.5)) plotr(m(zero)) ///
yscale(range(`min' `max')) xsca(ran(1898 2002))
Tom
-----------------------------------
Thomas J. Steichen
[email protected]
-----------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 1:58 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: st: Re: area between reference lines
Tom gave an elegant solution.
Here is a slightly different way of doing it: not really better, just
different.
You could use -scatteri-, giving the four corners of the rectangular
band, and then -recast(area)-.
That avoids the creation of a temporary variable.
The code below includes various extra cosmetic tweaks.
sysuse uslifeexp, clear
* range y variables and set buffer
summ le_male, meanonly
local min = r(min)
local max = r(max)
sum le_female, meanonly
local min = min(`min', r(min))
local max = max(`max', r(max))
local buff = (`max'-`min') * 0.04
local min = `min' - `buff'
local max = `max' + `buff'
* do plot
tw (scatteri `min' 1915 `max' 1915 `max' 1921 `min' 1921, recast(area)
col(emidblue*.25)) ///
(line le_female year) (line le_male year) ///
(scatteri 80 1921 "WW-I & " 78 1921 "Spanish Flu" 80 1945 "Post
WW-II", s(i)) ///
, legend(order(2 "males" 3 "females") ring(0) pos(4) col(1))
///
xtitle("") ytitle("life expectancy (years)") yla(, ang(h)) ///
xli(1945, lcol(emidblue*.5)) plotr(m(zero)) yscale(range(`min'
`max'))
Steichen, Thomas J.
One possibility is to creat the "buffer" yourself. Here I place a 4%
buffer on the y-axis using yscale(range()) and some pre-calculations (if
desired, one could do something similar for the x-axis). My preference
is for subtle shading (as shown) but many other preferences exist.
sysuse uslifeexp, clear
* range y variables and set buffer
qui summ le_male
local min = r(min)
local max = r(max)
qui sum le_female
local min = min(`min', r(min))
local max = max(`max', r(max))
local buff = (`max'-`min') * 0.04
local min = `min' - `buff'
local max = `max' + `buff'
* do plot
tempvar aux
g `aux'=`max'
tw (area `aux' year if year>=1915 & year<=1921, col(emidblue*.25)) ///
(line le_female year) (line le_male year) ///
(scatteri 80 1921 "WW-I & " 78 1921 "Spanish Flu" 80 1945 "Post
WW-II", s(i)) ///
, legend(order(2 3)) xli(1945, lcol(emidblue*.5)) plotr(m(zero))
yscale(range(`min' `max'))
Michael Hanson
Thanks, Tom: -plotregion(margin(zero))- is a useful option to know --
I would not have found it without your suggestion. However, in
testing it, I noticed that forcing the margins of all graphs to zero
(which it must do to preserve the y-axis range) can have undesirable
side effects. For example, if you replicate Martin's earlier example
with this option, the line graph will touch the x-axis in 1918.
There are circumstances where this behavior would be fine, but others
in which it would not -- and I prefer the default behavior of Stata
to "buffer away" the lower limit of the line graph from the axis in
this case.
Thus, I still find my "hack" of using a large range of dates within a
-tline- command to be preferable. I still would like to see
StataCorp modify -tline- to accept a date range rather than a list of
individual dates, as this option would make my "hack" a little
cleaner and easier to use.
On Nov 10, 2008, at 8:53 AM, Steichen, Thomas J. wrote:
> Try adding option -plotr(m(zero))- to your plot. This will remove
> the gap.
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