///
Prash,
Welcome to the Stata World. Add this to Martin's solutions:
(1) The word is Stata, not STATA. Minor issue, but good to know it.
(2) In statalist the standard is to use "-" for commands, such as the
command that computes ARCH's is -arch-, then we get a clear picture when
it is english or a command in Stata.
(2) You should get info at http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/, most of
your questions may be answered there. Also, google is a good tool for
finding manuals on Stata. However, Stata manuals are the key for harder
problems.
Good luck, Rodrigo.
-----Mensaje original-----
De: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] En nombre de Martin Weiss
Enviado el: Viernes, 03 de Octubre de 2008 04:22 p.m.
Para: [email protected]
Asunto: st: RE: Some Basic STATA Questions
Welcome and good to see you in the community! On the first question, you
can open as many instances of Stata as your computer allows; or you can
-append- or -merge- datasets. On the second, every time you open an
instance of Stata, "a new dataset" is already there. -generate- as many
variables as you like, -format- them and -save- them in .dta format. If
you want to get file transfers, both in and out of Stata, right fast, I
would recommend investing in Stat/Transfer which is great in combination
with the -ssc describe stcmd- package.
BTW, the red columns are string variables. Stata is not particularly
fond of those, so most of the time you want to -decode- or -destring-
them. After -destring-, they will be highlighted in blue in the Data
Editor and Data Browser. Note that not all strings should be treated
this way, though. If you have a dataset whose 250 rows are populated by
the countries of the earth, you probably should leave the "country"
variable as string...
HTH
Martin
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Prashant
Shukla
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 10:12 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: st: Some Basic STATA Questions
My first Hello to the STATA community! I am really, really new to STATA
and I am going to be using it to perform various kinds of data
manipulation. Also, I have been a user of SAS in recent times so these
questions mention SAS every now and then. In general, I found STATA to
be quite user friendly with all the commands. I have been reading the
manuals and a lot of online help sites so that's been good. However,
here are a few questions I had:
1. STATA only opens one data set at a time, while SAS can open as many
as you want in one window. How do you get around that problem? I ask
because I will have to use multiple datasets at one time for sure. This
is a concern and I am sure expert STATA users get around this "problem."
2. How do you create a blank dataset in STATA? In SAS, we have the data
step where one can keep variables we want, format them, etc and then set
them equal to whatever we want from some other data set. Mapping and
creating new data sets is a bulk of what I do, hence this question. 3.
What is the best way to import files into STATA. I am using the
"insheet" command but I get a many "red" columns, all the time. 4. How
do you format fixed width excel or TXT files in STATA? And, export them
properly? In particular, format the fields to be a certain width, keep
the leading zeros etc.
Thanks so much. I really, really appreciate it, looking forward to all
your answers.
-Prash.
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