WHAT IS STATA
Stata is a regression package that is used particularly by biomedical and economics researchers using cross-section and panel data. It is becoming the most popular package for such purposes as it has many of the latest methods and is relatively easy to use.
For extensive information go to http://www.stata.com/
STATA ACCESS AT U.C.-DAVIS
- Stata is available on the Social Science Data Service (SSDS) Unix computer
Palmer for faculty and graduate students in the Departments of Economics,
Political Science and Sociology. You need an account on Palmer to access
this. The license for Stata permits a limited number of users at anyone time.
To date this has not been a problem.
- The Department of Economics lab and SSDS lab have Windows Stata running
on PC.
- ARE also has STATA on both Unix and PC platforms.
STATA DOCUMENTATION
For details on obtaining information about Stata go to sthelp.html
USING STATA ON A WINDOWS PC
For interactive use
start Stata by clicking on the Stata icon.
Simplest is in Windows Explorer to left double-click
For batch use with program in file myprog.do
either
Using Windows Explorer left double-click on myprog.do
or
Start Stata by clicking on the Stata icon
In Stata change directory to the directory that has program myprog.do
and data
e.g. cd c:\maindirectory\subdirectory
In Stata execute the program using the do command
e.g. do myprog.do
USING STATA ON A UNIX MACHINE
Telnet to the Unix machine (e.g. palmer.ucdavis.edu but this may change over time) and login
For interactive use give the command
stata
and to quit give command
exit, clear
For batch use with program in file myprog.do give the command
stata -b do myprog.do
This will execute the commands in myprog.do and put output in myprog.log
(and additionally to any log file that you specified in the program itself).
To make a batch file use the editor pico if it is available.
(This is easier to use that some of the other Unix editors. It is similar
to pine).
A simple way to run Stata in batch mode is to run through a cycle of three
commands:
stata -b do myprog.do Runs
the Gauss program in batch mode
pico myprog.log Lets
you see the results if they are in myfile.log
pico myprog.do Lets you edit and
make changes to the Gauss program
You can use the up arrow key to save having to retype these commands.
As an intermediate approach while in interactive use of Stata one
can
run a batch file with the Stata command rin. For example, run myprog.do
Useful Unix commands include ls which lists the directory, cp to copy
a file, and rm to remove a file.
SIMPLE EXAMPLE
The following example generates 100 draws from a normal distribution with
mean 4 and standard deviation 2
and then gives a summary of the generated data.
clear
set obs 100
gen normal24 = 4 + 2*invnorm(uniform( ))
sum
exit, clear
For further information on how to use Stata go to
http://cameron.econ.ucdavis.edu