distplot and right-censoring

[John Mullahy]

The -distplot- command written by Nick Cox has become my default for picturing cumulative distributions.

search distplot

But does anyone know if it's possible with -distplot- to censor the CDF? An example would be where the data have a long right tail so that most of the graph is depicting the CDF near 1. In this case a clearer picture might emerge if the graph could be censored at some not-so-large value of the data, much like many familiar pictures of Kaplan-Meier curves in clinical studies involving, say, administrative censoring.

The desired picture could be obtained by using the -cumul- command, e.g.

sysuse auto

sort price
cumul price, g(cprice)

tw scatter cprice price if price<10000, s(i) c(l) ylab(0(.2)1)

But using -distplot- would be preferable.

Note that using "if price<10000" with -distplot- does not provide the desired result.

It may be that this is not currently a feature of -distplot- but if anyone knows differently I'd be grateful to know. Thanks in advance.

[Nick Cox]

Correct. distplot does not support thiis at present.

[George Ford]

I did this and it worked, at least in the visual presentation. Or I suppose you could preserve, drop>10000, and then do it.

distplot price
distplot price if price<10000