I'd add the following nominees:
1. -stset-'.
2. -return list-. Or rather, all the good things stored in r().
3. _n & _N, although they're not commands.
Peter.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
Sent: 21. maj 2004 15:02
To: [email protected]
Subject: st: Top ten tricks [was: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Using
postfile]
Thanks very much. Being a bit smart with this stuff depends on smarter
people having written it.
The deeper lesson is the extraordinary leverage afforded by -by:-.
That leads to me to ask a question: which would we nominate as (say) the top
ten tricks which are the deepest and most Stataish features in what we use?
What is _both_ simple _and_ deep?
What leads to great results with at most a few lines of code?
Let me explain what I mean.
Something like
-generate- is something utterly fundamental and extraordinarily useful and
Stata could not be imagined without such a commnand. But the main idea is a
standard one. The same could be said about say -if-.
Commands like -regress- or -stcox- (no
relation) are very well done, and key tools in the toolkit: but the
greatness of the commands matches the greatness of the statistical idea and
the associated machinery.
On the other hand, -by:- still gives many pleasant surprises once you see
how to use it.
The more you use, the more you admire it.
I'd nominate straight away
1. -by:-.
2. -foreach- or -forval- with varlists or numlists.
3. -merge-. I rarely use it but -merge-masters have real leverage in file
manipulations.
4. -assert-. My candidate for the most
underestimated command in Stata (second is -count-).
5. -reshape-.
Any other nominations?
Nick
[email protected]
Amani Siyam
<nice message>
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