Re: st: RE: Features for Stata 14

[Ronan Conroy <rconroy@rcsi.ie>]

These are small suggestions, but come up in teaching sessions with my doctoral students.


1. Pie charts, though I seldom draw one, have a syntax that seems to fly in the face of Stata usage. Nick Cox's -pieplot- is a model of the syntax that ought to be employed.

2. Creating indicator variables for the categories of a variable requires use of the -tabulate- command and the -generate- option. This is awkward, and users could be forgiven for not knowing the option was there. A separate command would be more useful and immediately visible.

3. Stacked bar charts of a categorical variable need to be drawn (I think – please tell me if there's an easier way!) by creating dummy variables (using the awkward -tabulate- route!)

. qui tab infection_route, gen(inf_)
. gr hbar (mean) inf_*, over(sex) stack percent

And even here, the legend needs a bit of a tidy

4. The -proportions- command should allow the use user choice of methods to generate confidence intervals. The current formula, based on a logit transformation, is at least preferable to the normal approximation method that was previously used, but the resulting intervals are still wider than those obtained in smaller samples using the Wilson or (equivalent) Jeffrey's methods, which perform better in simulation studies. The -proportions- command should allow you to choose your method, just as the -ci- command does.

5. The dialogue for -twoway- tables with measures of association uses "within-column/row relative frequency" and "relative frequencies" to refer to what any mortal would call column, row and total percents. My students find it a little bewildering.







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


Prof. Ronan Conroy
Associate Professor of Biostatistics


RCSI Department of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Lower Mercer Street, Dublin 2, Ireland
T: 01-402-2431
E: rconroy@rcsi.ie  W: www.rcsi.ie

RCSI DEVELOPING HEALTHCARE LEADERS
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