Teaching with Stata

Stata is a useful tool to demonstrate statistical concepts to elementary (and advanced) statistics classes. For elementary classes, one of the issues is to avoid making the class one in how to use Stata but keep the focus on learning statistics. We have found a lab to be helpful to teach students how to use Stata. The basic commands need to be demonstrated, and since most students don’t have full Stata documentation, some simple command descriptions are useful. It is also a good idea to use datasets from real life to illustrate the ideas. Some pitfalls can be shown—our greatest goof (that we continue to do) is when using logical commands to create new variables—missing values are always an issue. Some moderately advanced ideas can be introduced into the elementary class. Tony Lachenbruch is experimenting with the permutation and bootstrap commands this year. Alan Acock is trying to find a way to move a college of SPSS and SAS users to Stata by getting students on the Stata bandwagon. Alan Acock is also trying to find which user-written commands should be incorporated in the first-year labs.