Speaking Stata: Front-and-back plots to ease spaghetti and paella problems

Cox, Nicholas J.

doi:10.1177/1536867x211025838

Speaking Stata: Front-and-back plots to ease spaghetti and paella problems

Cox, Nicholas J.

Authors

Dr Nicholas Cox n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Abstract

The spaghetti problem arises in graphics when multiple time series or other functional traces show mostly a tangled mess. The related paella problem (often experienced but not usually named as such) arises for multiple patterns combined in scatterplots. This column is a sequel to those in Stata Journal 10: 670–681 (2010) and 19: 989–1008 (2019). The focus is on what are here called front-and-back plots, in which each subset of data is shown separately with the other subsets as backdrop. The strategy is thus a hybrid of two more common strategies, showing each subset separately (juxtaposing) and showing subsets together (superimposing). A new command, fabplot, is introduced and used in examples.

Citation

Cox, N. J. (2021). Speaking Stata: Front-and-back plots to ease spaghetti and paella problems. The Stata Journal, 21(2), 539-554. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x211025838

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 31, 2021
Online Publication Date	Jun 29, 2021
Publication Date	Jun 1, 2021
Deposit Date	Aug 27, 2021
Publicly Available Date	Aug 27, 2021
Journal	The Stata Journal: Promoting communications on statistics and Stata
Print ISSN	1536-867X
Electronic ISSN	1536-8734
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	21
Issue	2
Pages	539-554
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x211025838

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