Binscatter plot warning

[Anusha De]

Hello,

I just want to know whether getting the following warning is normal for binscatter plots, I am getting similar warning anytime I am trying to create a binscatter plot---
warning: nquantiles(20) was specified, but only 7 were generated.

[Nick Cox]

binscatter is a community-contributed command from SSC, as you are asked to explain.

You missed off part of the warning, which directed you to part of the help file:

nquantiles(#) specifies the number of equal-sized bins to be created. This is equivalent to the number of
points in each series. The default is 20. If the x-variable has fewer unique values than the number of
bins specified, then discrete will be automatically invoked, and no binning will be performed. This
option cannot be combined with discrete or xq().

Binning is performed after residualization when combined with controls() or absorb(). Note that the
binning procedure is equivalent to running xtile, which in certain cases will generate fewer quantile
categories than specified. (e.g. sysuse auto; xtile temp=mpg, nq(20); tab temp)

The usual difficulty here is with ties in the data. A quantile plot of the variable in question should prove illuminating.

[Anusha De]

Thank you very much.