Find normal transform from ladder of powers ------------------------------------------- ^ladder^ varname [^if^ exp] [^in^ range] [^, g^enerate^(^newvar^)^] searches a subset of the ladder of powers (See Tukey, 1977 or Hamilton, 1990) for the transform that converts varname into a normally-distributed variable. ^sktest^ is used to test for normality. If ^generate()^ is specified, a new variable is created that corresponds to the minimum chi-square value from the table. ^generate()^ is not, in general, recommended since it is quite literal in its interpretation of smallest, thus ignoring nearly equal but perhaps simpler interpretations. References: Tukey, John W. (1977). ^Exploratory Data Analysis^. Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley. Hamilton, Lawrence C. (1990). ^Statistics with Stata^. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Example ------- . ^ladder mpg, gen(mpgx)^ Transformation formula Chi-sq(2) P(Chi-sq) ------------------------------------------------------------------ cube mpg^^3 238.53 0.000 square mpg^^2 80.88 0.000 raw mpg 18.38 0.000 sqare-root sqrt(mpg) 6.70 0.035 log log(mpg) 1.57 0.456 reciprocal root 1/sqrt(mpg) 0.27 0.874 reciprocal 1/mpg 1.83 0.400 reciprocal square 1/(mpg^^2) 17.11 0.000 reciprocal cube 1/(mpg^^3) 65.20 0.000 (mpgx = 1/sqrt(mpg) generated) In this case, the automatic ^gen()^ option chose 1/sqrt(mpg) whereas, based on interpretation, we would have been tempted to select 1/mpg. Also see ^help gladder^.