Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Introduction
This chapter starts off by telling you a little bit about the organization of this topic and
giving you tips to help you use it most effectively. The next section gives a brief overview
of the different kinds of Stata graphs we will be examining in this topic, followed by an
overview of the different kinds of schemes that will be used for showing the graphs in this
topic. The fourth section illustrates the structure of options in Stata graph commands. In
a sense, the second to fourth sections of this chapter are a thumbnail preview of the entire
topic, showing the types of graphs covered, how you can control their overall look, and the
general structure of options used within those graphs. By contrast, the final section is about
the process of creating graphs.
1.1
Using this topic
I hope that you are eager to start reading this topic but will take just a couple of minutes
to read this section to get some suggestions that will make the topic more useful to you.
First of all, there are many ways you might read this topic, but perhaps I can suggest
some tips:
•
Please consider reading this chapter before reading the other chapters, as it provides
key information that will make the rest of the topic more understandable.
•
While you might read a traditional topic cover to cover, this topic has been written
so that the chapters stand on their own. You should feel free to dive into any chapter
or section of any chapter.
•
Sometimes you might find it useful to visually scan the graphs rather than to read. I
think this is a good way to familiarize yourself with the kinds of features available in
Stata graphs. If a certain feature catches your eye, you can stop and see the command
that made the graph and perhaps even read the text explaining the command.
•
Likewise, you might scan a chapter just by looking at the graphs and the part of the
command in red, which is the part of the command we are discussing for that graph.
For example, scanning the chapter on bar charts in this way would quickly familiarize
you with the kinds of features available for bar graphs and show you how to obtain
those features.
As you have probably noticed, the right margin contains what I call the
Visual Table
of Contents
. I hope you will find it a useful tool for quickly finding the information you
seek. I frequently use the
Visual Table of Contents
to cross-reference information within
the topic. By design, Stata graphs share many features in common. For example, you use
the same kinds of options to control legends across different types of graphs. It would be
1
The electronic form of this topic is solely for direct use at UCLA and only by faculty, students, and staff of UCLA.
