The Graphical Interface
by Sharon Kardia

From Stata
This large statistical and graphical software package is now in release 5.0

Stata is a statistical powerhouse with only limited graphical abilities. Of all the large packages reviewed, this was the only one still exclusively using programing style commands. Consequently, there was a steep learning curve associated with reviewing this package and customizing the graphs were a chore.

UNIQUE GRAPHICS FEATURES: Stata had the best logistic regression graphics of any package reviewed. For example, it had options for generating ROC curves and a wealth of diagnostic plots for logistic regression. However, other than this, there were no particular graphical features of Stata that were unique.

STRENGTHS: Some of the strengths of Stata's graphical options include the ability to generate scatter plot matrices, bubble plots, confidence ellipses, and provide good univariate and bivariate plotting. It also had a wide array of available plots associated with its extensive section on survival analysis.

WEAKNESSES: The major weakness of Stata is its pre-tool bar and pre-menu-driven approach to graphics and statistics. Stata is prohibitive to new users and it slows down the processing and production of analysis and associated graphical display. Especially with so many quick and easy statistical graphics packages available, this drawback was striking.

LIKELY USERS: It is evident from the examples in the Stata manual and from the heavy emphasis on graphics associated with logistic regression and survival analysis that this package is geared toward epidemiologists. It would be hard to recommend it to others who don't already use this package unless they are epidemiologists and don't mind the extra work of the steep learning curve.

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