Roy Wada University of Illinois at Chicago Purpose of this presentation Strong demand for universal approach to systematic tablemaking in Stata Strangest advice seems to be coming from people with no background in empirical research ID: 428449
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Slide1
Universal and Mass Customization of Tables in Stata
Roy Wada
University of Illinois at ChicagoSlide2
Purpose of this presentation:
Strong demand for universal approach to systematic table-making in
Stata
Strangest advice seems
to
be coming from people with no background in empirical research
Latest vaporware features in outreg2Slide3
Recent complaints about table-making
“With eight dimensions it is difficult to see how any program could cope with line lengths ~ 100 (rather than say ~ 1000) and not produce an awful mess one way or the other.” - Tue, 21 Apr 2009
“But there is a point where it no longer makes sense for official
Stata
or
ssc
contributions to support complicated structures that are only needed every once in a while...” - Wed, 11 Nov 2009
“
Stata
has *no* ability to do this (though I assume one could program it, but I doubt it would be easy)” - Thu, 13 Jan
2011Slide4
Universal table-making
There is no important difference between various types of tables
Regression tables & summary statistics are merged on conditions (happens to be variable names)
Cross-tabulation
(Stub-and-Banner
)
Tabulation is merely conditional counting
Cross-tabulation is a conditional counting merged on conditions
Stub-and-Banner happens to be a particular type of conditional countingSlide5
Mass customization
“Mass customization … is
the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom
output” (Wikipedia 07/14/2011)
A solution was to do it column by column (the original
outreg
by John Gallup), which had been criticized as somehow nontechnical or outdatedSlide6
Some issues with previous efforts
Many good programs exist (
outreg
,
estout
,
parmest
,
xml_tab
,
tabout
,
etc
)
General commentary:
Rube-Goldberg
syndrome – over-engineered non-solutions for performing “simple”
tasks
Mata-based programs are expensive and generally not extensive nor easily upgraded
Wrapper-based programs suffer from the existential question, i.e
. then why
didn’t
Stata
Corporation
do it that way
Some programs were
clearly designed
by
people with no background in empirical researchSlide7
Desirable functionality
What
researchers wanted
was quantity of tables, not quality (hundreds of regressions per day)
Rarely for publication purposes (they don’t get published)
Exact formatting often
gets destroyed by the journal type-setters anyway
Excel is a fact of life – virtually every researcher uses it
LaTeX
is not that popular – just look at the working papers floating around, clearly something elseSlide8
Latest vaporware in outreg2
Already does cross-tabulation
Extending it to including summary stats is straightforward
Sideway-
tranpose
operation doubles the type of table format
Some minor tweaks and bug fixes
Probably by the beginning of August 2011Slide9
Terms of use (fair
use)
outreg2
implements
tasks
previously unknown
in Stata or
described nearly impossible
. It is provided as a professional courtesy. I strongly object to re-publication this work of under false
pretense
Plagiarism
is unethical, unprofessional, and academically dishonest, and egregious cases should be
publicized
as a
deterrent.