learning STATA

[maen assali]

Hello All, I am a beginner and trying to learn STATA on my own, I have weak biostatistics background, I bough couple of books for biostatistics. but want to know what is the best approach to learn STATA? STATA manual is too big, is there a better way to learn STATA?

[Jean-Claude Arbaut]

I don't give any link, on purpose.

At the very beginning, I found videos very useful. Both from StataCorp and from several universities: just look up on YouTube. The introductory videos will show you the differents parts of Stata and how to work with them. Actually I learned much with videos even before having any contact with the software.

I think the manual is not material you need to learn, but a place where you must know how to search and what kind of things you may find. Get acquainted with it. You will learn the most useful bits naturally. I use both the PDF files and the inline manual: the latter is more valuable when I want to quickly look up the help for a function. The former is better when you want to read everything in a section of the manual.

You will also want to look for Stata tutorials on Google. Again, several universities have good ones. The best is then to type the sample code in Stata while you read, and see the effect. Save the most interesting stuff to a do-file with comments of your own. When you are in doubt, try: you can hardly break anything.

You can also keep a list of the commands you need most, sorted by category (file input/output, regression...): with the name you can get the help immediately in Stata.Don't try to remember all the options, it's hopeless and useless: the manual is here for that.

Another very useful source: the forum. Read questions and answers, that will show you new ways to do things, or things you wouldn't even imagine are possible.

Oh, and by the way, it's Stata, not STATA. Some are very picky about it here.

Hope this helps

Jean-Claude Arbaut

[Joro Kolev]

There is an excellent book on Stata by Hamilton, Lawrence C. Statistics with Stata: version 12. Cengage Learning, 2012. I recommend this book to my PhD students. ( I myself learned by doing Stata in the first 3-4 years, but then when I started systematically, the learning was by reading this book.)

It is not important that you have the book exactly for your version of Stata, e.g., I was reading the version of this book for Stata 6, while working on Stata 7.

For a decent user of Stata, Hamilton is more than enough.

Then if you want to go for an advanced user, read pretty much all Stata Journal sections written by Nicholas Cox and pretty much all Stata Tips sections in Stata Journal.

For an advanced user you might also want to spend some time reading the manual systematically. Somewhere around Stata 8 I read pretty much cover to cover the [U] section of the manual (I think this is how it was called, this is the core of Stata).

Most important of all, do not just read, but read and then do stuff in Stata. You cannot learn Stata neither well nor badly if you are not using it.

[maen assali]

Thank you Joro and Jean-Claud for these valuable advises! I appreciate your time

Maen

[William Lisowski]

When I began using Stata in a serious way, I started - as others here did - by reading my way through the Getting Started with Stata manual relevant to my setup. Chapter 18 then gives suggested further reading, much of which is in the Stata User's Guide, and I worked my way through much of that reading as well. All of these manuals are included as PDFs in the Stata installation (since version 11) and are accessible from within Stata - for example, through Stata's Help menu. The objective in doing this was not so much to master Stata as to be sure I'd become familiar with a wide variety of important basic techniques, so that when the time came that I needed them, I might recall their existence, if not the full syntax, and know how to find out more about them in the help files and manual.

Stata supplies exceptionally good documentation that amply repays the time spent studying it - there's just a lot of it. The path I followed surfaces the things you need to know to get started in a hurry and to work effectively.

[maen assali]

William thats really helpful, I have read the getting started part, and I see your point. its overwhelming to learn Stata on my own and listening to the experiences of people who did this before me really helps

[Marcos Almeida]

STATA manual is too big, is there a better way to learn STATA?

The Stata manual is really big. But it was not aimed at being read at once.

Do like the old Romans: divide and conquer.

In other words, pick a specific topic, read the comments, take a close look at the Quick Start session and go to the examples, replicating them by yourself.

It must be a hands-on approach. Even if you think it is clear enough, I strongly recommend that you type the commands and reflect about the outuput.

Please don't be afraid to come to grips with the manual. Rest assured this stragegy will do wonders for those who follow this simple advice.

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Maen:
I do share all previous comments.
It's true that a first glance the Stata manual can look intimidating but, exception made for Stata commands common to all quantitative research fields (which are covered in Getting Started with Stata andin the Hamilton's textbook recommended by Joro), you can consider studying the chapters more useful for your research (eg, assumed that your main interest lies in biostatistics, those related to survival analysis and epidemiology). As far as other statistical issues come alive in your research you can widen your knowledge of Stata accordingly (via manulal; forum; Stata Press books and books on Stata).
Exception made for a handful of stalwart highly experienced listers, it's hard to know/remember the Stata manual perfectly. However, as others wisely advised you about, practicing with Stata increase your familiarity with Stata manual, too and, in the mid/long run, you will find yourself skimming through the Stata manual to refresh your memory about a given command/function you used in the past and, after a while that may well last years, you have to use again.
In sum, everybody on this list experienced your feeling of being somehow lost with this wonderful statistical package at the beginning of the journey.
I do remember my attempts to calculate a -bootstrap- -ttest- with Stata more than ten years ago: I repeatedly obtained a row of red xs, a clear sign that something was wrong with my code (as it actually was). However, like everybody else on this list, I stubbornly failed and tried again, until I succeded (and I'm still learning how to increase my chances of being successful with alimited number of attempts!). The same will surely happen to you, provided you will dedicate some hours of your time to learn Stata.

[Bruce Weaver]

Hello Maen. Here is a list of resources I found helpful when I started using Stata more regularly. Consistent with what others have said in this thread, Stata's own learning resources are among the first things I point to.

HTH.

[Alper Demirdogen]

Hi,

I think that Econometrics Academy will be useful. You could watch videos in the econometrics models section and will be able to play with the data sets and codes.

[Narendra Singh]

There are many resources of Stata. However, I would like to tell you one link you can check that link and I am sure that you will link because I gave that link to many students and they all appreciate that link.
https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/stata/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mf3...WFlYOYO_XMBwyJ
I will say must visit all link which is above my post and few will be below my post. But visit mine link as well. That will be helping you in learning Stata, I am 100% sure.

Thanks,
Naren