Re: st: Stata 12: wish list

[Neil Shephard <nshephard@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Sridhar Telidevara
<sridhar.telidevara@gmail.com> wrote:
> The dual objectives of any  software like stata are to assist
>
> 1. Research, and
>
> 2. Presentation of the results obtained from the research.
>
>
> I believe that the former is more difficult to design that suits
> everybody's requirements. This is where I am flexible and I am full of
> praise for stata modules and user programs.  However the latter is
> easier and that is where lot of standardization can be made so that
> researchers do not have to spend their time breaking their heads
> figuring out how to insert mean in a box plot etc. I am sure most of
> you would agree with me on this. I understand that not everything can
> be perfected but we can push the horizons. Flexibility and
> standardization are both important  for researchers.

You don't define what you mean by "standardisation".  The problem is
that what is "standard" for you is different from my "standard" and
the next persons "standard".

As I wrote, I use LaTeX, others prefer Word-processors, others may
prefer HTML.  Which should take precedence?  Why should the others be
neglected for not being the right "standard"?

The aspect of presentation that is worth developing in Stata, and
indeed has come along leaps and bounds since it underwent a major
revision, is the graphics engine.  Nick Cox covered the specific
request for mean/mode/median on box-plots quite comprehensively.

Neil

-- 
"Our civilization would be pitifully immature without the intellectual
revolution led by Darwin" - Motoo Kimura, The Neutral Theory of
Molecular Evolution

Email - nshephard@gmail.com
Website - http://kimura-no-ip.org/
Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/slackline/

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/