Manipulate x-axis in twoway graph with dates

[Amanda Grittner]

Hi Stata users, I want to make a twoway bar graph that plots a number (on the y axis) against a date (on the x axis). I want to manipulate the length, label and ticks of the x-axis. I tried to enter the dates in different formats into the xscale and the xlabel options, but keep getting a "range() invalid - invalid numlist" error for xscale and a "invalid label specifier" error for xlabel. How do I refer to dates in xscale and xlabel? I tried entering the dates in different formats.

input date number  16743 116
 16835 384
 17034 152
 17113 267
 17191 939
 17246 372
 17265 443
 17302 406  
17498 210  
end
format date %tdnn/dd/CCYY

  twoway bar number date , xscale(range(11/3/2005 (100) 11/28/2007))  xlabel(11/3/2005 1/25/2007 11/28/2007)

I also tried things like:

 twoway bar number date ,  xlabel(mdy(11,3,2005) mdy(1,25,2007)   mdy(11,28,2007) , format(%tdnn/dd/CCYY))

None of these worked. I appreciate any advice. Thank you!

[Nick Cox]

Cross-posted on Stack Overflow and answered. Please note our cross-posting policy, which is that you tell us about it.

[Andrew Musau]

Work backwards from the date that you want to display.

. di  %tdnn/dd/CCYY 16743
 11/3/2005

. di  %tdnn/dd/CCYY 17191
 1/25/2007

. di  %tdnn/dd/CCYY 17864
11/28/2008

For example, if 28th Nov. 2008= 17864, one unit represents a day, so 8th Nov. 2008 = 17864-20= 17844.

twoway bar number date ,  xlabel(16743 17191 17864)

[Amanda Grittner]

Answered on Stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...24787_56094074
Thanks Nick for pointing out the policy. Thanks Andrew for the suggestions.