New In

Stata graphs have an all-new style

You asked. We listened. Stata has an all-new default graph style.

Highlights

  • New default appearance for Stata graphs

  • Wider aspect ratio

  • Updated color palette

  • White background

  • Horizontal y-axis labels

  • Dynamic legend placement for certain graphs

  • And more

Overview

Stata 18 includes the new graph schemes stcolor, stcolor_alt, stgcolor, and stgcolor_alt.

stcolor is Stata’s new default scheme. It is based on the old default scheme, s2color, but has the following modifications:

  • The graphs are 7.5 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall.

  • The color palette is updated with brighter colors.

  • The background color is white.

  • The legend contains one column and is placed on the right side of the graph.

  • The y-axis labels are horizontal.

  • The major grid line is dashed.

  • The marker size is small.

  • Reference lines and lines added with the xline() and yline() options are black.

  • The histogram fill color is stc1 with a 90% intensity, while the outline color is stc1 with a 70% intensity.

Scheme stcolor_alt is based on scheme stcolor but has the following modifications:

  • The width and height are set to six and four inches.

  • The legend contains two columns and is placed below the plot region.

Some graph commands that use scheme stcolor_alt include tsline, tsrline, fcast graph, and estat acplot. If you would rather use scheme stcolor or any other scheme with these commands, you can specify the scheme() option.

Let’s see it work

. sysuse auto, clear
(1978 automobile data)

. twoway  (scatter price mpg) (lowess price mpg), subtitle("Price vs. MPG")
. sysuse lifeexp, clear 
(Life expectancy, 1998) . 

scatter lexp gnppc, by(region, total)

 

. sysuse educ99gdp, clear 
(Education and GDP)
.
generate total = private + public
.
graph hbar (asis) public private,
over(country, sort(total) descending) stack
title("Spending on tertiary education as % of GDP, 1999", span pos(11))
note("Source: OECD, Education at a Glance 2002", span)
. webuse nhanes2, clear 
.
logistic highbp sex##agegrp##c.bmi
(output omitted)
.
margins sex, at(bmi=(10(5)65))
(output omitted)
.
marginsplot
Variables that uniquely identify margins: bmi sex

Want old-style graphs?

If you would like to switch back to the old scheme permanently, type

. set scheme s2color, permanently

Or if you want to specify the old scheme in one graph command, type

. sysuse auto, clear
(1978 automobile data)

. twoway  (scatter price mpg) (lowess price mpg), subtitle("Price vs. MPG") scheme(s2color)