Customer Reviews

A Handbook of Statistical Analyses Using Stata, Second Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book looks like a compilation of lecture notes. It is not a comprehensive list of what Stata can do. Rather, it is short, contains a small amount of useful information (certainly compared to its price), and only illustrates how to accomplish a limited number of tasks. Most of these you can figure out from the online help. There is almost no information about how to input data.

A book to avoid.

When I started work with Stata I have many problems with tables, graphics on stata, etc, this book would be help you, the book introduces the stata's language with basic examples in statistic analysis, if you need learn stata this book is an excellent start point, the book includes basic aspects of: Tables, Graphs, Descriptive Statistics, probit, logit, and Maximum Likelihood, and content examples, exercises and solutions all with stata.

I bought this book as a complete STATA novice and have been quite disappointed with it. First, there is very little information on data input which was one of the first things I needed to do in order to be able to use the program (another reviewer also noted this). I spent much more time on various STATA websites getting answers to my questions than I did consulting the book, simply because the book didn't have what I needed as a beginner. Others I have loaned it to have said similar things, and ultimately end up using a different book or the websites as I did. That said, it does seem to have quite a bit of useful information if you have some background STATA knowledge and experience, so it's not a total dud. My best advice is to avoid this if you are completely new to STATA.

The book is arranged as a tutorial introduction to Stata, explaining the statistics and how to implement these in Stata.
It is well-crafted, showing different approaches where tasks are repeated tasks in different chapters and increasing in complexity and adding new twists and features as you go through.
I was new to Stata and read the Getting Started Manual and then this. It was an excellent way to get comfortable in the new environment.
Don't expect to learn a lot of statistics, but it illustrates a way of thinking about statistics that runs with the grain of the package.
This relates to the 3rd edition of the book that has been updated for Stata version 8.

This book is terrible, it doesn't really tell you anything that you couldn't find out from the help or 5 minutes of Googling. It rarely goes into detail, and when it does it's not on Stata itself or what you're actually doing but the mathematical functions behind something tangentially related. It's written as if by a schizophrenic and one point they're telling you to do a multivariate regression, though never why, and then they're onto scatterplots without ever finishing the multivariate regression. Seriously, check chapter 3 if you do buy this, you'll see. Just a terrible, terrible book. Do not buy it.