Conventions about what information goes on each axis of a two-way plot are precisely that, conventions. This column discusses—historically, syntactically, and by example-the idea that flouting convention in various ways can lead to small but useful improvements in graph display. Putting y-axis...

Circular statistics are needed when one or more variables have outcome space the circle, which is for example true for data measured with reference to compass, clock or calendar. Applications abound in the Earth and environmental sciences, not to mention economic and medical fields well...

I. J. Good (1916 – 2009) was a prolific scientist who contributed to many fields, mostly from a Bayesian standpoint. This column explains his idea of quasi- Bayes (a.k.a. pseudo-Bayes) estimation or smoothing of categorical frequencies in a contingency table, which is especially useful as a...

The display of data or of results often entails the preparation of a variety of table-like graphs showing both text labels and numeric values. I will present basic techniques, tips, and tricks using both official Stata and various user-written commands. The main message is that whenever graph...

The display of data or of results often entails the preparation of a variety of table-like graphs showing both text labels and numeric values. I will present basic techniques, tips, and tricks using both official Stata and various user-written commands. The main message is that whenever graph...

Describing batches of data in terms of their order statistics or quantiles has long roots, but remains underrated in graphically-based exploration, data reduction and data reporting. Hosking in 1990 proposed L-moments based on quantiles as a unifying framework for summarizing distribution...

Data on three proportions, probabilities, or fractions that add to 1 can be projected from a simplex to the plane and represented in a two-dimensional plot, commonly known as trilinear, triaxial, triangular, etc. The Stata program triplot has been available for some years as one way to produce...