Introduction to Stata 8

Notation in this booklet
Stata commands are shown like this:
tabulate agegr sex , chi2
tabulate and chi2 are Stata words, shown with italics, agegr and sex is variable
information, shown with ordinary typeface.
In the output examples you will often see the commands preceded by a period:
. tabulate agegr sex , chi2
This is how commands look in output, but you should not type the period yourself when
entering a command.
Optional parts of commands are shown in light typeface and enclosed in light typeface square
brackets. Square brackets may also be part of a Stata command; in that case they are shown in
the usual bold typeface. Comments are shown with light typeface:
save c:\dokumenter\proj1\alfa1.dta [ , replace]
summarize bmi [fweight=pop] // Weights in square brackets
In the examples I use c:\tmp as my folder for temporary files.
In the Stata manuals it is assumed that you use c:\data for all of your Stata files. I strongly
discourage that suggestion. I am convinced that files should be stored in folders reflecting the
subject, not the program used; otherwise you could easily end up confused. You will therefore
see that I always give a full path in the examples when opening (use) or saving files (save).
Throughout the text I use Stata's style to refer to the manuals:
[GSW] Getting Started with Stata for Windows
[U] User's Guide
[R] Base Reference manual (4 volumes)
[G] Graphics manual
[ST] Survival analysis and epidemiological tables
See more on manuals in appendix 1.
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