st: RE: Venn diagrams

[Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Not so; -venndiag- from SSC is more recent and it supersedes anything in the STB. 

But why be surprised? 

1. Writing a Venn diagram program that always looks good and works well is a tricky problem. Wanting the areas exactly right is an easy desideratum to state, but it does not make the problem easier. 

2. Jens Lauritsen hasn't found time to port this to the new Stata graphics; like everybody else he is a very busy person. 

3. Not many users have the Stata programming skills to write something as good or better, and it seems that none of them have the inclination to do this. 

4. StataCorp can be as capricious as any bunch of academics in not doing stuff that doesn't interest them. They can speak for themselves, or not, but I don't sense that this particularly appeals to anyone at StataCorp. 

5. Some may share my own personal view that while Venn diagrams are interesting mathematically and in the history of ideas they are of rather little use in data analysis. 

All likely to be very disappointing to anyone frustrated, no doubt, but surprising? I suggest not. 

(Michael can also speak for himself, but I think that his book does not purport to survey user-written programs at all.) 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Philip Burgess

I'm trying to graph a Venn diagram using (STB-54)  gr34.3

When I run - venndiag var1 var2 - it produces the tabular output
correctly but crashes altogether when I gues it is trying to graph the
output.

I'm surprised that - findit venn - indicates that gr34.3 (2000) is the
'most' recent ado for Venn diagrams. I could find no reference to such
in Michael Mitchell's (excellent) VGSG.

I wonder whether there is an appropriate ado ora work around. Ideally,
I want to generate areas that are poprtioned to the actual data.

I'm using Stata/SE 11.1 (born 30 Sept 2010)

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