st: Graphics link: tiled, labelled histograms

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

This link will take you to some simple but effective graphics: 

<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/politics/20080603_MARGINS_G
RAPHIC/margins.swf>

I learned of this from Andrew Gelman's blog. Andrew credits Chris Zorn
for alerting him. 

The interactive aspects are neat, although arguably not crucial for
analysis. 

A more prosaic question is: can you do similar (static) graphs in Stata?


A direct attack would be to write a program that would produce a tiled,
labelled 
histogram in more or less cartographic fashion. 

An easier fudge is to use the existing -stripplot- from SSC. I don't
have the data behind the link above, which are for Clinton vs Obama
support, but a loosely similar example is 
to hand: 

sysuse census, clear 

local abbrev ///
AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO
///
MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI
WV WY

gen abbrev = "" 

tokenize "`abbrev'" 

qui forval i = 1/50 { 
	replace abbrev = "``i''" in `i' 
}

set scheme s1color

stripplot medage, stack ms(Sh) msize(*3.5) width(0.5) ///
mla(abbrev) mlabpos(0) mlabsize(*.9) ysc(off) plotregion(lstyle(none))
///

more 

stripplot medage, stack ms(S) msize(*3.5) mcolor(black) width(0.5) ///
mla(abbrev) mlabpos(0) mlabsize(*.9) mlabcolor(white) ///
ysc(off) plotregion(lstyle(none)) 

more 

stripplot medage , stack ms(S) msize(*3.5) mcolor(gs14) width(0.5) ///
mla(abbrev) mlabpos(0) mlabsize(*.9) mlabcolor(black) /// 
ysc(off) plotregion(lstyle(none)) 

A downside of this is that the ensuing graphs are fragile in terms in
getting symbol and text sizes right. -graph combine- and things go to
pot, although the Graph Editor is to hand for corrective surgery. 


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