Speaking Stata: Some simple devices to ease the spaghetti problem

Abstract

The spaghetti problem arises in graphics when multiple time series or other functional traces show mostly a tangled mess. Devices to improve on graphical defaults include transformed scales (especially logarithmic scales); trying to increase the graph area showing the data (especially by losing the legend whenever possible); different colors sometimes; subdividing data into a few groups; subtraction to focus on residuals or smoothing to reduce noise; selection or sampling of what is shown or emphasized; and stacking series vertically.