Universal and Mass Customization of Tables in Stata

1. Universal and Mass Customization of Tables in Stata Roy Wada University of Illinois at Chicago

2. Purpose of this presentation: • Strong demand for universal approach to systematic table-making in Stata • Strangest advice seems to be coming from people with no background in empirical research • Latest vaporware features in outreg2

3. Recent complaints about table-making • “With eight dimensions it is difficult to see how any program could cope with line lengths ~ 100 (rather than say ~ 1000) and not produce an awful mess one way or the other.” - Tue, 21 Apr 2009 • “But there is a point where it no longer makes sense for official Stata or ssc contributions to support complicated structures that are only needed every once in a while...” - Wed, 11 Nov 2009 • “Stata has *no* ability to do this (though I assume one could program it, but I doubt it would be easy)” - Thu, 13 Jan 2011

4. Universal table-making • There is no important difference between various types of tables • Regression tables & summary statistics are merged on conditions (happens to be variable names) • Cross-tabulation (Stub-and-Banner) • Tabulation is merely conditional counting • Cross-tabulation is a conditional counting merged on conditions • Stub-and-Banner happens to be a particular type of conditional counting

5. Mass customization • “Mass customization … is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output” (Wikipedia 07/14/2011) • A solution was to do it column by column (the original outreg by John Gallup), which had been criticized as somehow nontechnical or outdated

6. Some issues with previous efforts • Many good programs exist (outreg, estout, parmest, xml_tab, tabout, etc) • General commentary: • Rube-Goldberg syndrome – over-engineered non-solutions for performing “simple” tasks • Mata-based programs are expensive and generally not extensive nor easily upgraded • Wrapper-based programs suffer from the existential question, i.e. then why didn’t Stata Corporation do it that way • Some programs were clearly designed by people with no background in empirical research

7. Desirable functionality • What researchers wanted was quantity of tables, not quality (hundreds of regressions per day) • Rarely for publication purposes (they don’t get published) • Exact formatting often gets destroyed by the journal type-setters anyway • Excel is a fact of life – virtually every researcher uses it • LaTeX is not that popular – just look at the working papers floating around, clearly something else

8. Latest vaporware in outreg2 • Already does cross-tabulation • Extending it to including summary stats is straightforward • Sideway-tranpose operation doubles the type of table format • Some minor tweaks and bug fixes • Probably by the beginning of August 2011

9. Terms of use (fair use) • outreg2 implements tasks previously unknown in Stata or described nearly impossible. It is provided as a professional courtesy. I strongly object to re-publication this work of under false pretense • Plagiarism is unethical, unprofessional, and academically dishonest, and egregious cases should be publicized as a deterrent.