WHAT IS STATA
Stata is a regression package that is used particularly by biomedical and economics researchers using cross-section and panel data. It is becoming the most popular package for such purposes as it has many of the latest methods and is relatively easy to use.
For extensive information go to http://www.stata.com/
STATA ACCESS AT U.C.-DAVIS
Stata is available on the Social Science Data Service (SSDS) Unix computer Black for faculty and graduate students in the Departments of Economics, Political Science and Sociology. You need an account on Black to access this. The license for Stata permits a limited number of users at anyone time. To date this has not been a problem.
Windows versions of Stata are available for PC under Windows and Mac.
Some computer labs such as the Department of Economics lab have Windows
Stata.
The university has a site-license agreement for Stata.
This site-license also permits cheaper purchase of Stata manuals.
Go to the university site-license coordinator at https://software.ucdavis.edu:443/lowres/search.cfm
STATA DOCUMENTATION
For details on obtaining information about Stata go to sthelp.html
USING STATA ON SSDS UNIX MACHINE BLACK
Telnet to black.ucdavis.edu and login
For interactive use give the command
stata -p0
where the 0 in p0 is a zero.
and to quit give command
exit, clear
For batch use with program in file myprog.do give the command
stata -b do myprog.do
This will execute the commands in myprog.do and put output in myprog.log
To make a batch file use the editor pico if it is available.
(This is easier to use that some of the other Unix editors. It is similar
to pine).
A simple way to run Stata in batch mode is to run through a cycle of
three commands:
stata -b do myprog.do Runs
the Gauss program in batch mode
pico myprog.log Lets
you see the results if they are in myfile.log
pico myprog.do Lets you edit and
make changes to the Gauss program
You can use the up arrow key to save having to retype these commands.
As an intermediate approach while in interactive use of Stata
one can
run a batch file with the Stata command rin. For example, run
myprog.do
Useful Unix commands include ls which lists the directory, cp to copy
a file, and rm to remove a file.
SIMPLE EXAMPLE
The following example generates 100 draws from a normal distribution
with mean 4 and standard deviation 2
and then gives a summary of the generated data.
clear
set obs 100
gen normal24 = 4 + 2*invnorm(uniform( ))
sum
exit, clear
For further information on how to use Stata go to
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/~cameron