Order of bars in -gr bar-

[Laura Gibbons]

I am trying to reorder the bars in -gr hbar-, and what I'm trying from the documentation is not working for me. Here is an example using our favorite dataset:

sysuse auto, clear

*To create a string variable:
gen temp=substr(make,1,2)

* just to reduce the number of bars:
keep if temp<"D"

* this works fine:
gr hbar (count), over(temp)

* suppose I want the "B" bars first.
* this is what the helpfile says to do if you want them in a different order:
gen order=1 if temp=="BM"
replace order=2 if temp=="Bu"
replace order=3 if temp=="AM"
replace order=4 if temp=="Au"
replace order=5 if temp=="Ca"
replace order=6 if temp=="Ch"

gr hbar (count), over(temp, sort(order))

Error message:
"variable mean not found"

Can someone suggest how I can obtain the bars in the order I'd like?

Many thanks,
Laura

[Nick Cox]

That looks like a bug in the official code to me.

Meanwhile, this is one way to do it:

 
ssc inst catplot 
catplot temp, var1opts(sort(order))

[Laura Gibbons]

Thank you, Nick! I knew you'd know what to do.

[Nick Cox]

This would work too:

 
gen one = 1 

gr hbar (count) one, over(temp, sort(order))

[Olaf Verbeek]

In co-reference to a post on the list dated 21 Aug 2011, subject "Advanced features for bar chart and histogram in Stata", may I suggest the use of the transcendent -egen- command.

I wanted to highlight the average value for two years for a group of countries, along with the -gr hbar- plot of the separate country values.

An excerpt of the code I came up with, thanks to this - and the above mentioned post.

This generates a separate variable for the group average, and a variable for the rest of the values for each year:

separate [a], by(x==[value for the group average]) veryshortlabel
separate [b], by(x==[value for the group average]) veryshortlabel

Re-iterating, this will generate the following variables

• [a0] : all values for year 1, apart from the group average
• [b0] : all values for year 2, apart from the group average
• [a1] : the group average for year 1
• [b1] : the group average for year 2

I wanted the bars to be sorted by the values of year 2, so I generate the order variable like this:

egen order = group(b)

And subsequently, I plotted the graph:

gr hbar a0 a1 b0 b1,over(x, sort(order)) ///
bar(1, color(bluishgray)) bar(2, color(navy)) bar(3, color(orange_red)) bar(4, color(red))