Graphing univariate distributions is central to both statistical graphics, in general, and StataÕs graphics, in particular. Now that Stata 8 is out, a review of official and user-written commands is timely. The emphasis here is on going beyond what is obviously and readily available, with...

This column will focus on how to improve your fluency in Stata. Over the next issues we will look at Stata problems of intermediate size which turn out to be soluble with a few command lines. As an introduction, systematic ways of repeating the same or similar operations are surveyed to give one...

The editor and executive editor give some thoughts on the recent past, the present, and the immediate future of the Stata Journal. Copyright 2003 by Stata Corporation.

Three user-written commands are reviewed as illustrations of different approaches to tabulation problems, each one step beyond what is possible to do directly through official Stata. tabcount is a wrapper for tabdisp written to produce tables that show how often specified values occur or...

The great divide among data types in Stata is between numeric and string variables. Most of the time, which kind you want to use for particular variables is clear and unproblematic, but surprisingly often,users face difficulties in making the right decision or need to convert variables from one...

Functions in Stata take two main forms, built-in functions that are part of the executable and egen functions written in Stata's own language. These are surveyed, giving a variety of tips and tricks, and noting the large number of user-written egen functions available for download from the...