Re: st: logarithmic graphing problem

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

See

Cox, N. J. 2011. Stata tip 96: Cube roots. Stata Journal 11(1): 149-154.

http://www.stata-journal.com/article.html?article=st0223

for some suggestions. In a sentence, cube root is suggested there as
the simplest transformation that pulls in tails and treats values
around 0 symmetrically. See also

SJ-8-1  gr0032  . . . . . . .  Stata tip 59: Plotting on any transformed scale
        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q1/08   SJ 8(1):142--145                                 (no commands)
        tip on how to graph data on a transformed scale

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:57 PM, Dimitriy V. Masterov
<dvmaster@gmail.com> wrote:

> I would like to graph the effect of various variables on two outcomes.
> My effects data looks like this:
>
> outcome1        outcome2        variable
> -1.236299       -74.97698       one
> 1.316959        35.64509        two
>
> I want to make a scatter plot with outcome2 on the y axis and outcome1
> on the x, with variable serving as the label for the points. The
> problem is that the effects for the two outcomes are clustered around
> (0,0), so it would be nice to put the data on a log-like scale. The
> problem is that I have negative and zero effects and I would like to
> keep the axis labels in dollars. Is there any way of doing this in
> Stata?
>
> You can see the problem I have with the following fake data example
> (which uses num2words from ssc to generate the variable variable):
>
> /* fake data */
> #delimit;
> clear;
> matrix m = (0,0);
> matrix sd =(5,10);
> drawnorm x y, n(100) means(m) sds(sd);
>
> gen outcome1=sign(x)*x^2;
> gen outcome2=sign(y)*y^2;
> gen l=_n;
> num2words l, gen(variable);
> drop l;
>
> /* graph */
> twoway scatter outcome2 outcome1, xline(0) yline(0) mlab(variable)
> mlabangle(45);

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