An Introduction to Stata Programming (2nd Edition)

Stata is a statistical software package which allows solving a number of standard problems with the help of simple and often straightforward commands. More involved problems may need some programming: Non-standard estimators can often be implemented with the help of small programs. Also, the systematic preparation of data and the efficient presentation of results usually requires writing a program. In these cases, some of Stata’s features, which are a blessing for simple tasks, demand at least some creative rethinking. Stata’s macros, scalars, matrices, views, and other features are quite different from the concepts found in many other programming languages and often seem intimidating to the uninitiated. A person who wants to use Stata (or any other statistical software package) does not only have to learn a number of commands. Even more important is an understanding of an efficient workflow from data management to statistical estimation. There are books that specialize on some of the issues mentioned above. E.g. Kohler and Kreuter (2012) provide a general overview of the Stata software. StataCorp’s User’s Guide (2015) describes the elements of Stata and explains how to write programs. Long (2009) presents a book entirely dedicated to workflow with Stata. Baum’s An Introduction to Stata Programming (2nd Edition) combines a concise introduction into the Stata programming environment with a large number of applications to workflow, data management and estimation.