Customer Reviews

A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics

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Stata totally revamped it graphing capabilities with version 8. I appreciate the ability to control all aspects of making graphs, but it comes with a price -- I had no idea how to make graphs anymore. This book is a huge help for understanding the new graphing commands.

So throw away your Stata Graphics manual as it is virtually unreadable (I mean that in the nicest possible way). This is a book of examples -- hundreds of them -- to help you figure out how to make graphs in Stata 8.0 or higher. The book is very nicely done and after reading the book I have a much better grasp of how to make graphs. It includes sections on all different kinds of graphs and even explains how to streamline making nice graphs using schemes. Highly recommended. You can also download all the necessary data and schemes from Stata's website to replicate every graph in the book.

This is a good book on how to make graphs with Stata if you don't have the time to go through the Stata Graph Manual. It's also much easier to learn than the manual. There are some repetitions in the book - the same concept is illustrated a few times for different types of charts - it makes sense for a reference manual but if you read the book cover to cover, it's not of much use. It can be a better book if the author could include more materials on how to do serious programming on graphs, because still many types of charts can not be easily produced by Stata build-in commands.