29 September 2002: The next North American meeting of the Stata Users Group will be held in Boston, 17 March 2003. The one-day meeting will be followed by a one-day short course on measurement error in nonlinear models. Participation in the meeting is welcomed, either as a presenter or an attendee. There are on-line forms to submit a presentation proposal, or for registration (presenters' fees will be waived). The program committee is co-chaired by FMRC Moderator Kit Baum; please contact him for more details.
29 September 2002: The World Bank's World Development Indicators dataset has been updated for the 2002 cdrom, containing data through calendar 2000. These data may be accessed by web browser, or the entire dataset used within Stata on the campus network.
29 September 2002: The World Bank's Global Development Finance dataset (formerly known as World Debt Tables) has been updated for the 2002 cdrom , and is now web-accessible. The entire dataset may also be accessed over the web using Stata.
06 August 2002: Thirteen datasets from the Sociometrics Corporation's Contextual Data Archive (CDA) are now available in Stata and SPSS formats. These datasets provide demographic and economic information on various geographical divisions (census enumeration districts, census tracts, ZIP codes, school districts, places, cities, counties, MSAs, states) of the US for 1970-1995.
29 July 2002: The Federal Reserve System's H.10 Daily Exchange Rates release, containing 36 U.S. daily interest rate series from 1971 to the present, is now available online in Stata format.
25 July 2002: The IMF's Directions of Trade Statistics Historical is now accessible from the on-line access system. The standard DOTS dataset, for which BC receives monthly updates, starts in 1980 for annual, quarterly, and monthly series. The Historical dataset contains annual data back as far as 1948 and quarterly/monthly series back to 1960.
24 July 2002: The Federal Reserve System's H.15 Selected Interest Rates release, containing over 50 U.S. daily interest rate series from 1954 to the present, is now available online in Stata format.
22 July 2002: The Federal Reserve System's 1998, 1995, 1992, 1989, 1986, and 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances datasets are now accessible in Stata/SE format (as single files) on the campus network. Links to the questionnaire instrument have been added. The 1983-1989 Panel Survey is also available in this format.
18 July 2002: Three waves of the Federal Reserve System's Survey of Small Business Finances dataset are now accessible in Stata format on the campus network.
10 April 2002: A statement discussing why point-and-click statistical software is inappropriate for teaching advanced statistics and performing research has been revised on the GStat website to include comments on use of Excel for teaching statistics. The GStat Program staff welcome your comments.
18 February 2002: The mySQL database system underlying several popular U.S. Census Bureau websites has received awards for its ease of use and speed. The Census Bureau makes extensive use of open source tools, such as Perl, Apache, PHP and mySQL for FedStats, MapStats, and QuickFacts. Programs using the same suite of open source tools provide access to many sizable statistical databases on econ.bc.edu, in support of the Boston College Libraries Virtual Data Center.
14 February 2002: Faculty, students and members of the B.C. community can now directly download data sets from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) web site. ICPSR is an archive of thousands of data sets on topics covering education, health care, demographics, social indicators, political behavior, and much more. Find data by searching the database by keyword, investigating agency or by an ICPSR study number. The web site also highlights special data collections for major research areas such as Education, Aging, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data among others. Most data collections now have online codebooks, which are also searchable and downloadable. When an online version of documentation is not available the library will acquire a print copy and add it to our collection. Faculty and students who have used ICPSR data for years will find it faster and easier to download the data themselves. To manage large data sets requiring additional space and research support, you may contact either Barbara Mento or Rani Dalgin, for further assistance. For access instructions and links to the ICPSR catalog, go to this URL (requires authentication).
5 December 2001: A set of web pages designed and implemented by GSA Francesco Zanetti provide information on computing resources for the Carroll School of Management's Finance Department.
4 December 2001: a FAQ on how to efficiently add group characteristics to an existing dataset using Stata, authored by GSA Coordinator Kit Baum, was added to StataCorp's online collection of FAQs.
3 December 2001: An on-line help document on the use of Stata in a Unix or Linux environment is now available.
1 December 2001: The Libraries' Faculty Newsletter, Fall 2001/Winter 2002 issue, features the Virtual Data Center project and the GSA Program's role in its creation.
15 November 2001: Detailed information on many of the data sets in the Virtual Data Center are now accessible through a set of web pages created by the GSA Program. These pages categorize datasets into a scheme similar to that used by ICPSR, which is used in the on-line catalog (see the Advanced Search capability in Quest/DR).
1 November 2001: Web pages containing worked textbook examples for popular texts are now available for Stata (and in some cases for SAS and SPSS). This is a collaborative project of the GSA Program and the Statistical Consulting unit of UCLA's Academic Technology Services.
13 September 2001: The holdings of the Boston College Virtual Data Center, as documented in the GStat Program's Data Resources metadatabase, are now accessible via the University Libraries' QUEST system. The contents of the VDC will be significantly augmented during the fall semester.
2 August 2001: The GStat FAQ has been revised to include a link to Prof. Stephen Jenkins' excellent tutorial on Survival Analysis using Stata.
1 August 2001: UNCTAD's TRAINS database on disaggregate tariff measures for 1990-1998 is now included in /GStat/DR. Documentation is available within the BC community.
19 July 2001: The National Center for Health Statistics April 2001 release of their 1998 National Health Interview Survey is now available online in Stata, SAS and SPSS formats, with links to the survey homepage.
13 July 2001: A selection of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 data (for the United States and Turkey) is now available online in Stata, SAS and SPSS formats, with links to the study homepage at Boston College.
09 July 2001: A significant fraction of the contents of the United Nations' database on Women's Indicators and Statistics is now available online.
21 June 2001: The World Bank's Global Development Finance dataset (formerly known as World Debt Tables) has been processed by GSA program staff, and is now web-accessible. The entire dataset may also be accessed over the web using Stata.
21 June 2001: Web pages describing access to two significant datasets are now available from the GStat website. The NCES Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) is now accessible in Stata format. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey: Nursing Home Component (MEPS-NH) is now available in Stata and SPSS formats.
24 Apr 2001: A dataset suggestion form is now available. This form may be used to recommend that a particular statistical dataset be made accessible within the Boston College network.
15 Feb 2001: A new on-line GStat resource, Research Methods, provides course descriptions, schedules, staffing and links to web-accessible resources for courses offered throughout the University. This information will help students seeking a course covering specific concepts, as well as faculty seeking colleagues with expertise in particular methodologies.14 Feb 2001: Lists of statistical organizations and statistics journals are available in the first section of the GStat FAQ.
19 Jan 2001: Stata version 7.0 is now available on campus through the Stata GradPlan program. It offers many new features and capabilities. Contact your GSA for information on the upgrade. A new version of Stat/Transfer, 6.0, is also available for Windows 9x/NT/2000 machines.
09 Nov 2000: The GSA Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for statistical computing is directly accessible from http://fmwww.bc.edu/GStat/FAQ