Thanks to Nick for the puff, and if you've not yet seen Significance you may prefer to get a whole copy rather than one article. The direct link for info is http://www.rss.org.uk/main.asp?page=1712
Nick comments on my comment: "One detail needs correction. Allan states that the -line- command does not have an option to mark points.
There are at least two Stata answers to that. ... use -twoway connected- [or] line y t, recast(connected).
... So if non-Stata users express incredulity to you at this statement, you can explain that there is no problem here."
Nick is demonstrating his encyclopaedic knowledge. I had stated earlier in the article that "Stata has a specific command for drawing line graphs, but the manual notes that this is a variation on the general two-way plot." This is in contrast to Excel, where line plots are a type of factor plot. Please advise your disciples and heretics that Stata has an excellent and general command language for creating plots, with some cheap'n'cheerful specific shortcuts for common cases. Don't start them with recast. At least "line sales day, sort" in Stata will draw a single line, whereas "highlight two columns in Excel and choose lineplot in Graph Wizard" will draw two lines!
Anticipating enraged Excel fans who read the article and accuse me of gross incompetence, I corrected the notation for an Excel range twice, but the final copy reverted to A1.A100. Would that one could supply LaTeX input.
If you like the article, a toolkit on boxplots appeared in Sept 2005 (Significance 2:3) and one on scatterplots is in press.
Allan
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