Subtle gender discrimination in Stata graphics

[Christian Thöni]

Producing a scatterplot with symbols for male ♂ and female ♀ I came across this funny issue:

tw scatteri 1 1 "{c 11}" 2 1 "{c 12}" 3 1 "{c 11}{c 12}" , scale(2)

Stata (12.1) seems to be willing to produce the symbol for females only in connection with the male symbol (or some other symbol), but not in isolation...

[Stephen Jenkins]

FYI I get the same graph as you (or at least what I think you're getting) in versions 11, 13.1 and 14

[Sergiy Radyakin]

What is the problem? (Stata 12.0/Windows) Sergiy

[Friedrich Huebler]

Sergiy, the problem is that others don't get your graph.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Right click your graph. Select Preferences.Tell me what font do you see set there.
Then change the font to "3D Unicode".
Rebuild the graph if necessary.
If you don't have a "3D Unicode" in the list, tell me a few choices that are present there in your installation.
Let me know if this fixes the issue.

Best, Sergiy Radyakin

[Stephen Jenkins]

Sergiy, in versions 12.1, 13.1 and 14 (Windows 7, Stata MP4) I get the graph that Frederich shows. The font shown in graph preferences is Arial (default) in every case. "3D Unicode" does not appear in the drop-down menu, as far as I can see, in any of the 3 versions. I get the "standard" list in all version plus, in version 14, a number of them with names prefixed by "@". Experimenting with several of these did not resolve the issue. E.g. "@Arial Unicode MS". To me, it's puzzling because I would have thought the use of a SMCL directive would have been ok.

[Friedrich Huebler]

Even if a different font shows all symbols it doesn't explain why with the default font the command

tw scatteri 1 1 "{c 11}" 2 1 "{c 12}" 3 1 "{c 11}{c 12}" , scale(2)

draws the female symbol at y=3 but not at y=2.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

First, I would like to reassure that the image posted in #3 is an original, unmodified screenshot of Stata 12.0 running on Windows 7. Fact.

Rest is guesswork. If switching the fonts didn't help (I still haven't seen the list of the fonts that are available in the drop down menu on the machines exhibiting the problem), try the following, which I expect will force the feminine character:

tw scatteri 1 1 "{c 31}{c 11}" 2 1 "{c 31}{c 12}" 3 1 "{c 31}{c 11}{c 12}" , scale(2)

Including the "unit separator" char should not hurt, it is invisible anyways, and including it anywhere should help, whether in the beginning, end, or the middle of the label.
If this doesn't help either, contact Stata Tech Support.

For those of you interested in showing special characters in Stata graphs here is an overview of other potentially useful characters (actual Stata graph):
http://www.radyakin.org/stata/symbols/symbols.png

Best, Sergiy Radyakin

[Svend Juul]

When I try:

scatter mpg weight , title("{c 11}") xtitle("{c 12}") ytitle("{c 11}{c 12}")

I see the same problem on my screen: no valid x-axis symbol. But when I print the graph, the female symbol is there.

Funny, isn't it?

[Chris Vecchio]

I googled the term "3D Unicode font" and found a page that read:

To read these pages install Open Type fonts - MS Free core fonts for the Web or use the font Lucida Sans Unicode on Windows.

Using this font, the female symbol renders on its own. Though as Friedrich said, this still doesn't explain why the symbol doesn't render on its own with the default font.

graph set window fontface "Lucida Sans Unicode"
tw scatteri 1 1 "{c 11}" 2 1 "{c 12}" 3 1 "{c 11}{c 12}" , scale(2)

I see the same issue using display

di "{c 11}"
di "{c 12}"
di "{c 11}{c 12}"

[Friedrich Huebler]

For those of you interested in showing special characters in Stata graphs here is an overview of other potentially useful characters (actual Stata graph):
http://www.radyakin.org/stata/symbols/symbols.png

The special characters are described in Stata documentation: http://www.stata.com/manuals14/g-4text.pdf#g-4text