Stata on a Mac

Five Essential Applications for Academic Mac Users

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:37:00 +0000

I've mentioned a lot of small freeware programs on this site, but these are the workhorses of daily academic life: word processors, reference managers, and organizational tools. Here are my top five:

1. Bookends. Everyone in scholarship needs some way to organize all of their citations. Most people use Endnote or Procite. I've found these programs to be very sub-standard on the Mac; like SPSS, you're basically getting a ported version of the program that is several versions behind and runs quite slowly. There are online options like RefWorks, but this is usually administered through a university; what happens if I graduate or take a leave of absence?

By far the best option I've found is Bookends. It's developed only for OS X.

Advantages: Excellent interface; responsive developer; smart groups; importing attachments very simple; exports to many formats including Endnote and Bibtex; affordable; very easy to remove duplicates; integrated Amazon.com and Library of Congress searches; plug-ins available for Word and other word processors like Mellel; universal binary.

Disadvantages: Not free ($69 for students, $99 for regular license); "Get PDF" function only works for PubMed; sometimes slow to launch; new version upgrades cost $29.

There's also a native OS X program called Sente I've heard about, but never used.

2. Bean

Advantages: Free; open source; very slick; small memory footprint; handles .doc files.

Disadvantages: Does not update automatically; does not support footnotes (obviously a serious drawback for dissertation writing)

3. iGTD

Advantages: easily imports emails and web pages from other programs; excellent Quicksilver plug-in available; exports lists to iCal and iPod; very customizable; many keyboard shortcuts; drag-and-drop works from almost every application; easy to print lists along with notes you've made; works with Growl (although I don't bother with this feature); minimal memory/CPU footprint; responsive developer

Disadvantages: Takes some getting used to, like all organization applications

4. NetNewsWire

Advantages: Free; smooth interface; internal browser is excellent and supports java; customizable; works offline (unlike netvibes and online readers); integrates with MarsEdit (blogging software that I use), Firefox and Safari

Disadvantages: hmmm, not many are coming to mind.

5. Voodoopad

Advantages: all-purpose notepad that accepts text, links, pictures, pdfs; responsive developer; lots of interesting plug-ins; great interface

Disadvantages: Upgrades not free; Quicksilver integration buggy; wiki format can be a little confusing for note-taking at first.

Using TextWrangler Stationery with Stata

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:24:00 +0000

In addition to its other wonderful features, you can use TextWrangler to save ready-made Stata templates. For example, I'm dealing with the 1975 Fraternal Order of Police study on gambling arrests. Most of the time when I open Stata, I'm dealing with this file. However, it's not something I want to write into my profile.do file, because I sometimes use other files.

Each time I deal with the 1975 data, I want to do four things (at least):

Set the memory to 10m; it's a small dataset and doesn't need a large memory allocation.
Open the original file.
Save it as a working file.
Start a log.

Textwrangler makes this easy with stationery. You can save any file as a stationery file that will be available in the File - New menu in the future.

Here's a quick guide to setting up some Stata stationery in Textwrangler

Open TextWrangler. Type in the desired text:

Save this file in the stationery folder:

IMPORTANT: the file must be saved in the Textwrangler Stationery folder in Application Support. So save to ~/Users/adamjacobs/Library/Application Support/TextWrangler/Stationery. Otherwise this won't show up in the dialogue:

Now we open Textwrangler and select "New With Stationery":

And here is our new document, already formatted with the desired memory, log, save path and data file.

As far as I know, there's no limit to the number of templates you can have. Start using stationery and you can save a lot of typing (or mousing) over the next year.

Technorati Tags:
Mac OS X, Stata, statistical software, text editors, TextWrangler

Integrating Quicksilver Actions with Stata

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:04:00 +0000

If you're never used Quicksilver, it's the number one freeware Mac utility for any system. I've raved about MainMenu, WeatherDock is great, iGTD is always open, MagiCal is brilliant, Menushade was in one of my first posts, NetNewsWire is indispensable, and I could go on. (I suggest you subscribe to FreeMacWare or CoolOSXApps if, like me, you love little free utilities, which seem to abound on OS X). Quicksilver gets more use per day that any of these, no matter what I'm doing. That's because it's essential a shortcut program that minimizes the keystrokes required for repetitive tasks.

I mentioned Quicksilver in my previous post on launching Stata. Let's look at what it can do with Stata:

Launching applications. You can launch Stata, of course, but I almost always use Quicksilver to launch applications because I only have a laptop and hate the touchpad for mousing. Quicksilver "learns" your preferences: for example, if you type in "Te" searching for Textwrangler, the first thing that pops up might be TextEdit or Terminal. However, if you select TextWrangler a few times in a row after typing in "te," the program will adjust and start making TextWrangler the first icon that pops up.

You don't have to wait for the program to adjust, you can directly change the default as well. Say I want Stata to be the first thing that pops up when I type "s". Currently it's Safari:

I can change it directly in quicksilver:
Navigating folders: I find Quicksilver faster and easier than Finder for file navigation. It's also far easier to use mouse-free. Here's an example: suppose I'd like to e-mail the .dta file to a colleague for analysis. In quickilver, it's just a few keystrokes:

I press "st" and navigate down to my Stata folder, instead of the Stata app:

I press the right arrow and the contents of this folder are displayed:

Right arrow again, and I see the contents of this subfolder. Here's the file I'd like to e-mail:

I press tab and select an action. I could open this file in Stata, show it in Finder, or move it to the desktop. But I'm selecting "Email to..."

Finally, I press tab again and type a few characters of the colleague's name and their email pops up:
Open a file in a non-default application.I have my computer set up so all .do files open by default in Textwrangler, my preferred editor. However, obviously sometimes you want to open them in Stata. This is very simple with Quicksilver:

Find the folder:

Navigate with the arrow keys to the preferred file:

Tab over to the action pane and select "Open with..."

Select Stata instead of Textwrangler.

Additional notes on Quicksilver:

You can also tell quicksilver how "deep" you'd like to index things. Do you want every single file in every single sub-sub-folders available? I wouldn't recommend this, because it slows down the application to index all of this into its cache. You don't want every photo you've ever taken popping up when you type in "im" as the first two letters. Generally one or two levels is sufficient. This can be set in the "Catalog" preference pane.

You may also want to turn off the iTunes module. This allows you to switch to any song, but also really slows down the search and indexing since most people have thousands of songs, podcasts, and in my case, books on tape.

Launching Stata: Dock, Spotlight and Quicksilver

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:12:00 +0000

Launching Stata doesn't initially seem like an issue worthy of discussion. It's simple: you go to the Dock, and you click the icon, right? Yes. That's one way. There are at least two others. Let's review them all:

The Dock:

I like to keep the Dock hidden, and I don't use it all that much. But it's certainly an easy way to launch programs. Just mouse over to the Stata icon and click it:

If you hold down the mouse button, or right-click the icon, you get a minimal menu:

Advantages: no keystrokes; only one click required.
Disadvantages:

Note that if you're completely mouse-averse, as I am when working with just a trackpad, you can maneuver through the Dock with the keyboard. Press Ctrl-F3 on a full keyboard or Function-Control-F3 on a laptop keyboard. This activates the Dock:

Now you can just use the arrow keys to move down to Stata. This functionality is built into Macs for accessibility reasons (I think) but it obviously can be helpful at other times. However, it's too many keystrokes for everyday use.
As an aside, I'd suggest Dock hiding for better concentration: press ⌥⌘D to turn on hiding. The dock re-appears when you mouse over in its area.
Spotlight: you can invoke the Spotlight menu with ⌘-space bar and type in Stata:

Advantages: no mousing required.
Disadvantages: I'm still using OS 10.4 and Spotlight is just too slow for application launching. It chugs when you start it up, and spends too much time finding useless files (1091 hits?).

By the way, there are two copies of the application because I have a clone backup hard drive mounted, so Spotlight sees a copy of Stata on the backup drive as well.
Quicksilver: This is my preferred method for launching Stata. Quicksilver is an amazing utility that launches applications, runs scripts, searches folders, performs basic calculations, searches the internet, opens bookmarked pages and even modifies text files. Read more about it here. I am a huge advocate of this program, it's the single most useful piece of free software I've got and that's really saying something.
Quicksilver is invoked with Control-space bar and looks like this:

If I type in "st" then Stata will pop up, and I just need to press enter to launch:

I can also navigate through folders, and open specific files rather than just the executable. Let's look at an old log file:

We can also perform other actions on the Stata executable like Reveal, Get Info, or move file:

And Quicksilver isn't just for applications; it takes many kinds of inputs including URLs, files and text. Here's a quick way to copy a log file to the desktop:

Advantages: no mousing required; faster than Spotlight; allows for other actions on Stata executable (Get Info, Reveal in Finder, Display Path); quick file launch of logs and .do files; flexible. Disadvantages: can be complicated.

As you can probably tell, I'm very pleased with Quicksilver's functionality and I'll deal with it more in the next few posts.

Learn LaTeX Online?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:59:00 +0000

This seems like an interesting web application:

If you want to "test drive" LaTex without downloading it, there is now a web application for you:

Learn and Use LaTeX Online with MonkeyTex

When I taught statistics I learned to use LaTex, a very helpful program for typesetting equations. While we used Stata for the in-class assignments, I used Latex constantly to create handouts, exam review sheets and homework PDFs. For Mac, the distribution is MacTex.

Many scholars I know also use LaTex as a bibliography management tool, though I prefer Bookends even if it's not free.

Recommended Mac Freeware: URLWell

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:51:00 +0000

I've already mentioned three indispensible Mac freeware programs: Mainmenu for system cleaning and maintenance, Menushade for dimming the menubar, and AntiRSI for preventing repetitive stress injuries while programming. I have also recommended freeware options for text editing, either Textwrangler or Smultron.

Another tool I use daily is URLWell:
It's a small menubar icon that allows you to drag urls in for later viewing. This is tremendously useful for things you'd like to remember, but have no desire to bookmark permanently. Here's what it looks like (it's the @ symbol):

Suppose I've found a piece of software that I may want to download later. I can just add the link to URLWell by dragging and dropping:

Now when I click on URLwell, it has a list of all of the sites I've marked:

There are several nice options to clean up your list. You can export an HTML file with links, a text list, or just open all of the pages in separate browser tabs:

There are no keyboard shortcuts, which is too bad, but the interface couldn't be simpler. Urls can be dragged from other applications: I most frequently use this to move blog posts from NetNewsWire for later reading.

Apparently the developer of URLWell disappeared, much to the consternation of the Mac universe. So a kind-hearted web citizen is currently hosting a site for downloading URLWell.

URLWell link from JeweledPlatypus.org

I'm completely satisfied with URLWell, but if you are looking for more full-featured bookmarking software, the developer of Smultron has developed a similar bookmarking program called Hallon. The advantage - or disadvantage, depending on how you see it - of Hallon is that you can bookmark anything: emails, iTunes songs, blog posts, Finder folders. That might be a little more than I need right now, though I'm intrigued by the idea.

If you're wondering about the names, Smultron means "Strawberry" in Swedish, so his other programs are Hallon (raspberry) and Lingon (lingonberry, a Scandinavian fruit you may recognize from IKEA jams).

I'm going to add a freeware link list on the side of the site. Not all of them will be Stata-related, but I think they can all be helpful to Mac users.

Technorati Tags:
Mac OS X, Mac freeware, URLwell

Quickly Creating New .do files with DocumentPalette

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:44:00 +0000

DocumentPalette is an odd little freeware utility I discovered a few months ago. It's definitely not something everyone will find useful, but it does provide a way of quickly creating a new Stata .do file without ever opening Stata or a text editor.

Document Palette allows you to define file templates that can be automatically inserted into any folder. Here's an example:

I'll define a basic Stata .do file that just runs the describe and summarize commands.

Now I'll save that file to the desktop as basic.do:

Now we can configure DocumentPallete to make this this default Stata file for insertion in folders. We go to preferences:

We click the "plus" button to add a new file format and select our desktop file:

We specify that it's a Stata .do file and add a shortcut key (s):

Now it appears in our list of file formats:

In a Finder window, you invoke DocumentPalette by pressing:

⌃ - ⌥ - ⌘ - N

(that's Control - Option - Apple - N)

Now we insert a new Stata .do file from the DocumentPalette menu. A transparent window pops up allowing you to insert various files in this folder::

And here it is in Textwrangler. Notice the path is ~/Documents/Thesis revision/basic.do.

This may seem like a lot of work just to add a basic file template. It is, but only at the beginning. What makes it much more useful is the possibility of highly specific file templates. Suppose you're doing a lot of work with the 1975 Fraternal Order of Police Survey on Gambling Enforcement (just hypothetically speaking, of course). You can make DocumentPalette automatically insert a .do file that opens this data, opens the relevant logs, and prints some summaries.

This isn't the sort of material you'd want to write into your system .do file, because you won't always be working with this dataset. But when you are, you can add new files easily without a lot of copying, pasting or repetition.

In the next post I'll deal with a related and, I believe, far more helpful idea: defining Stata stationary in Textwrangler.

AntiRSI - Highly Recommended for Mac Stata Coders

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:56:00 +0000

I just recently found a piece of freeware I'll recommend to every programmer who gets glazed eyes from long stretches of coding.

AntiRSI is a simple program that reminds you to take breaks while working at your computer. There are two levels of breaks: "micro pauses," 15 second intervals that occur every four minutes, and "work breaks," eight minute periods that occur every 50 minutes. You can of course adjust how frequently these breaks happen.

It's a nice piece of nagging: if you start typing or mousing before the break is over, it starts again. You can also postpone the larger breaks if you're in the middle of something that needs to get done right. Since it's nagging my right now, I'll take a screenshot:

The program is small to download ( less than 100K), takes almost no memory and does the job very well. I've noticed a difference since I installed this. Just looking away from the screen for 15 seconds frequently does wonders for shoulder cramps and eyestrain.

AntiRSI from Onne Gorter in the Netherlands - Freeware

More on Mac (and other) Text Editors

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:39:00 +0000

I posted a short message about this website on Statalist the other day. I got a few responses, including one from Kit Baum, a professor at Boston College and a Stata Mac guru par excellence. He suggested I add a link to the Boston College Stata text editors page, so I'm doing so, both on the sidebar and in this post:

Notes on Stata Text Editors - Boston College

If you prefer Aquamacs or Smultron to Textwrangler, there's good information here on integration within OS X. The site also contains a lot of general information if you're working cross-platform. My university - and I suspect many others - has a remote PC log-in system where you can use a client like Citrix or Remote Desktop Connect to get into a Windows or Unix system on campus. So I'm necessarily switching to Windows XP temporarily to run larger jobs (the network computers have Stata/MP, the largest version of Stata).

Advanced Step 1: Let's Go to Services

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:51:00 +0000

If you've used Mac OS X for any period of time, you've probably noticed that there's a menu called "Services" in every application. Here it is in Safari:

Most people never use this menu, even though it can be tremendously time-saving. That's probably because the few useful services are lost within all the other ones, so the menu is a bit of a time waster.

First of all, let's reduce the number of services available. There are a huge number that most people will never use: Chinese Text Convertor is an obvious one for me, as well as Disk Utility and Speech Items. I think I'll remove a few more after looking at this screenshot, as I can't remember ever using "Send to Bluetooth Device" (I don't have any), and "TextEdit" and "Xpad" have been replaced by TextWrangler.

To remove services, download the freeware ServiceScrubber. You can just de-select the irrelevant ones:

And here it is, even more minimal than before:

Now, time to use Services. Suppose we're browsing trying to find the right Stata code on the company website. I'd like to find some information on seasonal ARIMA models, which tend to model crime rates pretty well. Looking around on Statalist, the help forum, I see a snippet of text that looks like what I'm interested in:

I select the text and then look in Services:

And once clicked, you have a new Textwrangler file with the desired text copied right in.

This comes in very handy when you're browsing and find a link you'd like to add to a text file, or a quote you won't remember but want to record. Start using Services and it will help keep the massive amounts of information organized. You may want to just setup a file to dump all of these things into. I use Voodoopad for random clippings that might be helpful or interesting but can't be read right now.

Technorati Tags:
Mac OS X, Stata, statistical software, text editors, TextWrangler

Aside: Keys to a Healthy Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:07:00 +0000

If you're going to run Stata on a Mac, you need to have your Mac in good working order.

Your Mac does not need to be fast to run Stata effectively. As evidence, I present my own system specifications:

That's right, I have a non-Intel Mac with 0.75 G memory and a 1.33 Ghz processor. The standards for laptops sold today are more like 2 G memory, 2+ Ghz processor. Nonetheless Stata works fine on my Mac.

However, you need to have your Mac in good working order. Here are the five steps to doing so:

Install a cleaning program. The best of the bunch are Onyx, Cocktail and my favorite MainMenu. These programs automate the background cleaning functions that are essential for keeping your Mac running well. Most of these programs do the same set of actions: clear caches, repair permissions, run maintenance scripts, clean logs and empty trash. The programs can also do system-related things like displaying invisible files, relaunching the finder and dock, and ejecting external drives. Even if you're a terminal expert - I'm not - these utilities make it extremely easy to do the essential background tasks.

Here's what MainMenu looks like in the menubar:

It's the "set of tools" icon in the center. And here are the options:
Reclaim some memory. The best way I know to do this is to disable Dashboard. Yes, Dashboard is fun, and I like the add-on games. But it really hogs the memory, each widget can take up as much as a medium-sized application. Mainmenu allows you to disable Dashboard. There are a number of other small things you can do, such as turning off Dock animation:
BACK UP. Everyone know this, but it's easier said than done for many people. But there's plenty of free software that can help you do this very easily. I suggest SuperDuper, which makes a complete clone of your hard drive with preferences, spotlight indexes, everything. Here's a shot (I'm away from home so the backup drive isn't hooked up):

In order to schedule backups, you need to register SuperDuper. I'm sure there are free ware options, but I just set an iCal nag to remind me to run this program from time to time. It will save my life one day.
Delete things from your hard drive. If you're using a lot of memory, your computer uses some hard disk space as virtual memory. Make sure your hard disk isn't busting at the seams. Deleting movies and music (or moving them to a backup drive) is usually the easiest way to do this.
Have a clean desktop. It doesn't seem like it should make a difference, but I've heard that it takes quite a bit of computer tower to render the graphic icons on the screen (please correct me if I'm wrong, I have little technical knowledge here). Here's my desktop, completely clear:

If you don't want the drives to appear, and I don't, change the settings in Finder:

For more ideas, see "52 Ways to Speed Up OS X." (Hat tip to Lifehacker, one of my favorite blogs.)

Technorati Tags:
Mac OS X, Stata, System maintenance, MainMenu, Lifehacker, Dashboard

Coming Up Next: 5 Advanced Mac/Stata Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:15:00 +0000

In the next posts, I'll cover some more advanced techniques:

Using Quicksilver to quickly insert commands in a text file
Integrating the TextWrangler services menu
Setting up suffix mapping in TextWrangler
Using DocumentPalette to open Stata template files
Modifying Stata graph output

(Quicksilver, TextWrangler and DocumentPalette are freeware programs that work on any version of OS X.)

I'm also planning to add an RSS feed button, improved formatting and hopefully some advice from more senior Mac gurus.

Step 5: Logging your sessions

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:14:00 +0000

This step is an easy one, but essential. Stata has a log function that records all of the commands. This gives a running record of every command you entered, whether it was typed or done in the menus. Clearly, you may want to look back at descriptive statistics, regression diagnostics or other results to check on your work.

You can also add comments in your log, which is helpful when you read your log two months later and wonder why exactly

arima D.crime, ar(1) ma(1), vce(robust)

is different from

arima crime, arima(1,1,0) sarima(0,1,1),

and which one is better.

So you can add comments to explain this to your future self by typing the * before some explanation, like this:

arima D.crime, ar(1) ma(1), vce(robust)
* This command models a differenced time-series with first-order autoregression with robust standard error estimation
arima crime, arima(1,1,0) sarima(0,1,1)
* This command models a seasonally differenced series with a seasonal moving average and first-order autoregression.

The best way to read old logs is in the Stata viewer, because it highlights and formats everything quite naturally.

You can log in the command window by just typing:

log using FILENAME

However, because you need the full extension, it's usually easier to click the log button:

Notice that you can append logs onto already existing files. This is handy if you want a complete running record of everything you did with a specific dataset.

I'd like to figure out how to make date-specific log files, but I don't have it working quite yet.

Incorporating the current date and time is explained more fully on this page from the Stata site.

Those are the basic five steps. Next we'll deal with 5 advanced Mac/Stata tips.

Step 4: Importing unformatted data

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:22:00 +0000

If you're lucky, you'll never have to deal with unformatted data. You'll just cruise to ICPSR or the local library and get your data in pre-formatted, machine-readable files with no errors, complete dictionary and label files, and lots of documentation.

That's exactly what I did for four years. Then I ran across an old, useful piece of data that had never before been put into a statistics package.

That's an exciting moment. While the General Social Survey has been combed over (and over and over) by social scientists, including me, it's nice to find a new dataset that hasn't been mined very heavily. Either that means it's a dud, or just that no one bothered with it and you may find something new.

Here's what the data looked like when I opened it:

0001124352540000000000000000000000000000000000000
000222223225202022222322120200001222232322520202223232212020
371141530500000000000000140010021803

Hmm.

No commas, no spaces, and no file to read all of this into Stata (or SPSS or anything else).

However, there was a paper codebook that explained what all of this meant. The first four digits are the ID; the next is the card number; the next is the opinions of Fraternal Order of Police members on the severity of illegal bookmaking on a 1-to-4 Likert scale. And so on.

infix dictionary {
* imports Fraternal Order of Police Study from 1975 Gambling Commission Study
2 lines
1:
ID 1-4

card 5

serbook 7

serlarc 8

sernumb 9

serpot 10

sercard 11

serfence 12

serhook 13

And we're off! By the way, "2 lines" is a Stata command indicating that a data records runs longer than a single line.

From here there are two ways to go:

First way:

Save the file as a .dct file, meaning it's a data dictionary

Use the infix menu in Stata (under File)

Specify the location of the raw data file and the dictionary file:

Second way (preferred for me):

Paste the raw data into the file below the dictionary

Save the file as a .do file

Run it in Stata

At this point, everything should be fine. Of course, you'll make mistakes the first few times, and need to re-run things.

Next time I'll address Step 5: Logging your sessions.

Step 3: Choosing an External Text Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:40:00 +0000

Stata provides many ways for interacting with the program. You can use the drop down menus, of course. You can write your commands in the Command window. Or you can use Stata's built-in .do file editor, like so:

The notepad button opens a new do file

However, I'll suggest that you use an external text editor instead of the built-in text editor.

I'm not a snob about this. I still use the menus for many commands, especially new ones I'm not familiar with. However, eventually you'll have to write long files to:

Label (label var command)

Import (infix or infile command)

Define variable values (label var def command)

Summarize (summ/desc/codebook commands)

Using a text editor is easier for the following reasons:

Text editors make search-and-replace easier if you make a systematic mistake
Text editors allow you to have Stata closed while writing
Text editors (at least the ones outlined here) highlight syntax, which is invaluable for checking your code
Text editors just have more options than the built-in editor (keyboard shortcuts, multiple views, ready-made templates)
Text editors, as the name might suggest, make editing existing .do and .dct files much easier

As far as available editors for Mac, there are many. Look around VersionTracker and you'll find all sorts of free or cheap options, like SubEthaEdit, TextWrangler, Smultron, Vim, and lots of others.

If you're willing to pay a bit more, there are very full-featured programs like BBEdit ($49 US educational, $125 otherwise) and TextMate (39 Euros). Although these are impressive, they are geared much more towards professional web developers and are, in my opinion, a bit of overkill for Stata.

I can't say I've tried all of these, of course. But I've experimented with a number of editors, including the built-in TextEdit, Taco Edit, Aquamacs, Smultron and TextWrangler.

Unlike some built-in OS X software, TextEdit isn't too impressive. There are far better choices for free.

Taco Edit is really designed for HTML coding, not other languages.

Aquamacs is pretty good, some people really swear by it, including many of the skilled and serious programmers I know. The main objection I had was that it was much more difficult to integrate with Stata. You need to install a series of .ado files into Stata to make Aquamacs work as an external editor. Read this if you're interested.

I haven't tried Vim.

So we're down to two contenders:

Smultron (open-source, freeware)

Smultron is nice. It has a pleasant Cocoa interface. It handles multiple open files easily. It doesn't take much memory. Here's a screenshot:

TextWrangler (non-open-source, freeware)

However, I'm going to recommend TextWrangler, the free version of BBEdit developed by Bare Bones Software. Here's what it looks like:

Most importantly, TextWrangler integrates extremely easily with Stata:

Save a file with a .do extension, and TextWrangler will immediately recognize it as a file that should be formatted according to Stata syntax and run in Stata.app
The defaults can be set so new files are always formatted as .do files
Once you've saved a .do file, you can quickly run it in Stata like this:

Click the button on the right and the file will pop up in the Finder window:

Double-click the file in Finder and it will immediately run in Stata; if Stata is closed, it will immediately open it and run it.

And here's a really nice feature: at the bottom of TextWrangler, you can select your language and it will immediately recognize the command words. So if you need to do some website editing in CSS or HTML (as I sometimes do), TextWrangler is very helpful for that as well.

While you can't go wrong with either Smultron or TextWrangler, I'd recommend the latter as a free, full-featured, do-it-all program for Stata coding.

Next installment will deal with Step 4: Importing Unformatted Data

Technorati Tags:
Smultron, Stata, TextWrangler, Mac OS X, text editors, statistical software

Step 2: Setting up a profile.do file

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:43:00 +0000

One thing you'll find in your "Getting Started in Stata" manual is a brief explanation of setting up a profile.do file. Briefly, this is a file that's run every time Stata is started. So if you always want to perform certain actions - start a log, set the memory, change the working directory - this is the place to do it.

There are three steps to setting a profile.do file:

Write a do-file
Save it in the appropriate location (more on this in a moment)
Restart Stata and check to Results window

To write a do-file in Stata's built-in editor, go to the File menu:

(I'll discuss using an external text editor in the next installment)

You'll see a blank file like this:

Next we'll write a few commands. Remember these are things you want Stata to do every time you open it. Unless you exclusively work with one dataset, I wouldn't suggest opening it through the do-file. This is more "background": how much memory do you want allocated, where do you want the working directory, things that won't change often.

Here's our simple do-file:

It does three things:

Sets the memory to 20m (the default is 1m). This can be done in the regular preferences pane also.
Changes the working directory from "/Documents" to "/Documents/stata work/"
Checks for updates to the executable and the .ado files.

Now, most importantly, you need to save the .do file in the right location. It needs to reside in the Libraries/Application Support/Stata directory:

Re-start Stata and you should see something like this:

Success, the profile.do file is running as it should.

Next we'll deal with Step 3: Choosing an External Text Editor

Step 1: Installation and a Working Directory

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:00:00 +0000

So you've secured your copy of Stata for Mac OS X. Installation is pretty simple and there isn't a lot to it. You insert the CD and follow the standard procedure with Mac OS X installation packages.

One slight difference from other applications is that rather than installing in ~/Applications, Stata installs in ~Applications/Stata/. Not a lot to say about this. I have occasionally had a problem where I update the executable (more on this in the next installation) and it disappears from the dock temporarily. But otherwise everything works fine.

What you should do next is create a reasonable working directory. I believe Stata starts you out in either /Documents or /Applications/Stata, neither of which is ideal. Here's mine at startup:

In this installment, we'll:

Create a specific "Stata work" folder, with subfolders for projects

Change the working directory

Change the defaults so the working directory is always "Stata work"

Here's how:

If you're a mac user, you probably know how to create a directory. Go to "Documents" in the finder and select "New folder." Like this:

There are three ways to change the working directory:

Stata draws heavily from pre-windows command line (DOS and UNIX) structure; if you're comfortable with that, simply use the "cd" command from DOS (meaning "Change Directory") and type in the path. For example:

cd "/Users/adamjacobs/Documents/Stata work/"
However, most people will be more comfortable, and less error-prone, with the menu. Go to File ➡ Change Working Directory.

* Note: the menubar is dark because I'm using a utility called MenuShade that dims the menubar while you're working. I recommend this for users who want to save their monitors and focus better while writing.
If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, and I often do, the command is

⌘⇧J

I'm not sure why it's J, something like C would make more sense.

As for changing the defaults to always recognize this working directory, I'll cover that in the next step: Setting up a profile.do file.

Step 0: Why Stata?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:35:00 +0000

I'm going to cover the basic steps of setting up stata on a Mac, including specifying the working directory, editing and placing the profile.do file, selecting an external text editor and logging your work. However, I thought I'd start with the larger question: why use Stata in the first place?

Stata is hardly the only option in social science statistics software. At the very least, you could consider SAS, The R Project, Minitab, SPSS, S-Plus, MPlus, not to mention more specialized forms of modeling software like HLM (hierarchical linear modeling) and LISREL (structural equation modeling).

However, for Mac users there are considerably fewer options:

Here's the simple part: SAS, Minitab, HLM, Lisrel, MPlus, and S-Plus don't develop for OS X. Yes, I know there are Intel Macs that can run Windows, but that's not what this website is about. I am among those who still have an old PowerPC Mac; moreover, if I upgrade, I'd rather keep doing my data analysis in OS X.

Many people have told me R is the future. It is free, open-source and offers incredibly robust graphics features. I believe it. However, R is largely a programming environment. It is not primarily a data analysis package. I've tried it once or twice but I just never felt comfortable. I'd suggest R for only tech-oriented people very comfortable with programming. If you still need drop-down menus and extensive help files to do anything in statistics (and I do), I wouldn't recommend R.

This leaves us with the big players in the statistical software market: SPSS and Stata.

Stata offers four different versions: Small, Intercooled, SE, and MP. This page from the Stata website outlines the differences.

Small Stata is for teaching environments only - you're limited to 99 variables and 1,000 observations.

Stata MP is for multi-processor environments, either newer dual-core computers or servers. With an older PowerPC laptop this was not an option. It's also rather unnecessary because it's largely designed for parallel processing.

Stata SE is the larger version of Intercooled. The main difference is that is allows ~32,000 (2^15) variables instead of ~2,000 (2^11) for Intercooled. SE also allows you to include up to 11,000 variables in a regression (!).

Intercooled Stata is what most people will be purchasing. It allows an unlimited number of observations, 2,047 variables and 800 variables in a regression. In practice, I've never had any limitations with Intercooled Stata. Even with large social science datasets, it's rare to deal with more than 2,000 variables; even the largest ICPSR datasets like the General Social Survey don't usually contain that many.

All version of Stata include a full range of data analysis options. There are no add-ons or extra modules to purchase. This includes basic functions like descriptive statistics, graphics, and many forms of regression: linear, logistic, multinomial, poisson, GLM, ANOVA, ordered logistic and others. It also includes tools for time-series, event history analysis, multidimensional scaling, survey data, panel data, and robust standard error techniques like bootstrap and jackknife.

Stata also archives many user-submitted programs; these can be accessed through a simple search in the main window. It's a quasi-open-source structure: the software is proprietary but people submit add-ons that are freely distributed.

Intercooled Stata is available for $155 US with an educational discount. If you only want a one-year license (i.e. you're working on a limited-time project and know you won't need the software long-term) you can buy a one-year license for $95.

Stata comes with a small manual, "Getting Started With Stata for Macintosh." It covers the basics like file management and help as well as how to interact with your data. It's short but quite useful. There is a much larger set of Stata manuals that you can purchase separately, but I haven't bothered.

Stata offers a completely full featured package with excellent document for a very reasonable price. For comparison's sake, it's roughly the same cost as an upgrade to OS X 10.5. But what about the competition?

SPSS is available for Mac, and it appears they now develop the versions concurrently for Mac/Windows/Linux instead of lagging the Mac versions behind. However, the real drawback of SPSS is simple: price.

Let's take a look at the SPSS web store: thankfully I'll receive the higher education discount. That means the SPSS base system will only cost $619 US. Pretty high for a starting point. But wait, suppose I want to continue with an interrupted time-series analysis project I've been working on regarding crime rates in Atlantic City, NJ? I suppose I'd need SPSS Trends for another $519. Even worse, if I want basic maximum likelihood estimation models like logistic regression, I'll need to buy SPSS regression models for another $519. Remember this is with the educational discount and we're already talking about ~$1700 in software costs.

As you can imagine, the pricing continues like this. Would you like generalized linear model options? You guessed it, another $519 for that module. How about correspondence analysis and multi-dimensional scaling? For that option, the bargain basement price is only $419.

In spite of all this, I'm not completely opposed to SPSS. When I started out in graduate school and wrote my master's thesis, SPSS was a nice first option for dealing with logistic regression models and descriptive statistics. I've also used it in summer statistics workshops at ICPSR and been satisfied with its functionality. However, in both of those situations, the university had already paid to have all of the modules included; it wasn't until recently that I learned about the piece-by-piece pricing structure.

If you are purchasing a statistics package for yourself, there's no way I can recommend SPSS. The price is just unreasonable, and I really dislike the idea of separate modules that you need to purchase in addition. The non-university prices are even more prohibitive: the base system starts at $1600!

If you're still dubious, look at this MacStats review of Stata versus SPSS:

There are some reasons why SPSS for the Mac is not a viable long-term option for many people, even though it’s easier to explore than most stats programs. Mac versions lag behind Windows versions, and the user interface has quirks, bugs, odd crashes and pauses, and problems working with other programs. The price is absurd, and on top of the excessive cost for the base package, most users will need extra modules, each of which costs about as much as Stata – and they charge for module upgrades, too. Finally, there might not even be another version of SPSS for the Mac, and if there is, it might not work with new or old computer. Even now, there is no version of SPSS for Intel Macs.

Stata is the most full-featured, affordable and Mac-friendly statistical package available, and it's really not even close. Next post I'll discuss the basics of installation and setting up a working directory, with screenshots included.

The Raison D'Etre

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:32:00 +0000

This blog covers Mac integration on Stata. That's all there is to it.

I'm in the process of writing my dissertation on the growth of gambling over the past 30 years. One of the data sources I'm using is the 1975 Commission on the Review of the National Policy on Gambling. Unlike the more recent National Gambling Impact Study, the 1975 study is just in pure ASCII format. The data comes directly from the US National Archives and has not been processed like data at big archives like ICPSR.

As a result, I've delved much deeper into the coding details of stata, including dictionary files, the labeling language and memory management. I'll relate my tips and experiences here.

Stata is a wonderful program (see my review at Versiontracker) and the most Mac-friendly of all data analysis programs. The aim of this blog is to build a community of Mac Stata users and offer help to those just starting out.