What are other sources of support?

If you have a question that goes beyond Technical Support, we suggest you consider submitting your question to one of the statistical listservers.

Listservers send and receive email. When anyone sends email to a listserver, it is forwarded to all the subscribers of the list. Later, if someone feels moved to respond to the earlier posting, that person sends email to the listserver and that, too, is forwarded to all the list subscribers. Thus, the process of submitting a question to a list is

• You subscribe to the list by sending email to a special address (it's free).
• You then begin receiving email from the list, which you watch for a while until you get the hang of that list.
• You email your question to the list, whereupon it is forwarded to everyone.
• You hope that someone answers your questions. If you send your question to the right list, typically there will be multiple answers. Send the same question to the wrong list, and no one will respond.
• You optionally unsubscribe from the list.

The trick is in finding the right list. Below are some of our favorites.

By the way, below we show how to subscribe and unsubscribe. The easy way to subscribe or unsubscribe to any list is to click here. The way we show you to post, however, is useful.

Statalist

• Subscribe by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  majordomo@hsphsun2.harvard.edu 
Subject:  does not matter

subscribe statalist you@wherever.edu

• Post by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu 
Subject:  Whatever you please

text of your posting

• Unsubscribe by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  majordomo@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject:  does not matter

unsubscribe statalist you@wherever.edu

Statalist is about Stata and especially about using Stata in ways that go beyond that documented in the manuals. Remember that Stata is programmable. People on Statalist often trade programs to accomplish tasks.

Statalisters are very responsive to questions on how to use Stata.

Statalisters tend also to respond to substantive statistical questions when the questions are especially difficult or deal with advanced topics in statistics. List members tend not to respond to less advanced questions.

EDSTAT

• Subscribe by sending email

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  listserv@jse.stat.ncsu.edu 
Subject:  does not matter

subscribe edstat-l Firstname Lastname
set stat-l nodigest

• Post by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  edstat-l@jse.stat.ncsu.edu 
Subject:  Whatever you wish

text of your posting

• Unsubscribe by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  listserv@jse.stat.ncsu.edu 
Subject:  does not matter

unsubscribe edstat-l

EDSTAT is formally concerned with the teaching of statistics. In practice, list discussions often focus on usage.

EDSTATers have no direct interest in Stata or any other statistical package. The focus of the list is on statistics and its use.

EDSTAT members respond well to “basic” statistical questions, where basic is understood to mean basic with respect to someone with a Ph.D. in statistics.

EPIDEMIO-L

• Subscribe by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  listproc@cc.umontreal.ca 
Subject:  does not matter

subscribe epdememio-l Firstname Lastname
set epidemio-l mail ack

• Post by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  epidemio-l@cc.umontreal.ca 
Subject:  Whatever you please

text of your posting

• Unsubscribe by sending email to

From:  you@wherever.edu
To:  listproc@cc.umontreal.ca 
Subject:  does not matter

unsubscribe epdememio-l

EPIDEMIO-L is concerned with epidemiology first and statistics second. Nevertheless, if the question concerns the use of statistics in epidemiological problems, EPIDEMIO-L can be the place to go.

Others

There are lots of other lists and just because we did not list them does not mean they are not useful or even more appropriate than the lists above.

The lists mentioned above are ones that we personally have used with success.