Re: st: Rectifying y-axis labels using a tiny .scheme

[Ronan Conroy <rconroy@rcsi.ie>]

On 2011 Aib 14, at 14:06, Nick Cox wrote:

> Ronan's major point is clear and important: you can use schemes to set
> your own defaults.
> 
> Personal taste is almost everything here. I too tend to prefer -yla(,
> ang(h))- almost always, except that you can lose a lot of space if the
> numbers are 0.0001 or 0.00001 and you want to show them that way. (I
> know you can always change the units of measurement.)

My personal taste is for horizontal text, and given the choice between labelling the axis vertically with 0.0001 and changing the scale unit so that I can label it horizontally, I would do the latter. The metric system offers a choice of multipliers to do this. To quote from the uncyclopedia:

The metric system gives attractive discounts for orders of magnitude. For example, if you buy an 80 gigabyte iPod, you actually get 74 gigabytes. Different orders of magnitude are indicated using special prefixes. For example:
• Terapin : 10^12 pins
• Decimal: animal with 10^-1 legs (approximately 10^-0.42 times fewer legs than a bath towel)
• Centimental: A person with 10^-2 times normal emotional intelligence
• Nanogoat: an extremely small (10^-9) portion of goat, constituting 10^-11.2 of the Recommended Daily Intake of goat
• Millitarry: a slight (10^-3) delay
• Picoboo: a very subtle (10^-12) expression of disapproval
• Kilowhale: Moby Dick, 10^3 times more deadly than Bambi


Ronán Conroy
rconroy@rcsi.ie
Associate Professor
Division of Population Health Sciences
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Beaux Lane House
Dublin 2


*
*   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/