Yet another topic on ordering in bar graphs

[Dougie Jones]

I know these types of question seem silly but I have not found a solution with digging through the archives. I want to plot the values of variable 'yhat' over id and type, but I want to give the bars a colour using the asyvars option. In addition, I want to sort the order of the bars according to yhat. I have tried the following:

graph bar yhat, over(type) over(id, sort(1)) asyvars nofill

What happens, is my bars are no longer sort. They are sorted if I use

graph bar yhat, over(id, sort(1))  nofill

A data example:

     +--------------------------------+
     | id              type      yhat |
     |--------------------------------|
  1. |       40          A   4.432507 |
  2. |       48          A    5.10135 |
  3. |       48          A   5.611093 |
  4. |       48          A   6.062966 |
  5. |       71          C   6.086926 |
     |--------------------------------|
  6. |       79          A   6.172667 |
  7. |       48          A   6.176242 |
  8. |       48          A    6.28208 |
  9. |       26          A   6.564067 |
 10. |       79          A   6.851093 |
     |--------------------------------|
 11. |       26          A   7.008502 |
 12. |       32          C   7.029361 |
 13. |       71          C    7.10641 |
 14. |       26          A   7.187085 |
 15. |       29          B   7.245084 |
     |--------------------------------|
 16. |       35          A   7.364397 |
 17. |       64          A   7.626135 |
 18. |       32          C   7.707787 |
 19. |       32          C   7.709017 |
 20. |       26          A   7.753465 |
     +--------------------------------+

[Andrew Musau]

Next time use dataex to present data examples. Chances are you did not get a faster reply because it is just too much work to transform the data that you present above.

. I want to plot the values of variable 'yhat' over id and type, but I want to give the bars a colour using the asyvars option. In addition, I want to sort the order of the bars according to yhat.

Once you specify the option asyvars, Stata recognizes that each "y var" category is unique. Therefore, since your sort order depends on the variable "yhat" and not "id", generate a variable that defines the order first.

input id str5 type yhat 
40 "A" 4.432507 
48 "A" 5.10135 
48 "A" 5.611093 
48 "A" 6.062966 
71 "C" 6.086926 
79 "A" 6.172667 
48 "A" 6.176242 
48 "A" 6.28208 
26 "A" 6.564067 
79 "A" 6.851093
26 "A" 7.008502 
32 "C" 7.029361 
71 "C" 7.10641 
26 "A" 7.187085 
29 "B" 7.245084 
35 "A" 7.364397 
64 "A" 7.626135 
32 "C" 7.707787 
32 "C" 7.709017 
26 "A" 7.753465 
end

sort yhat
gen order=_n
graph bar yhat, over(type) over(id, sort(order)) asyvars nofill