Software Update: Stata 16.0

Stata is a software package for statistics and is widely used in economics, sociology and epidemiology. It can manage the data, perform statistical analyses, simulate and analyze regressions. For more information, please refer to this page. The development team has released version 16.0 with the following announcement:

Stata 16 Released

We just announced the release of Stata 16. It is now available. Click to visit stata.com/new-in-stata.

Stata 16 is a big release, which our releases usually are. This one is broader than usual. It ranges from lasso to Python and from multiple datasets in memory to multiple chains in Bayesian analysis.

The highlights are listed below. If you click on a highlight, we will spirit you away to our website, where we will describe the feature in a dry but information-dense way. Or you can scroll down and read my comments, which I hope are more entertaining even if they are less informative.

The big features of Stata 16 are

• Lasso, both for prediction and for inference
• Reproducible and automatically updating reports
• New meta-analysis suite
• Revamped and expanded choice modeling (margins works everywhere)
• Integration of Python with Stata
• Bayesian predictions, multiple chains, and more
• Extended regression models (ERMs) for panel data
• Importing of SAS and SPSS datasets
• Flexible nonparametric series regression
• Multiple datasets in memory, meaning frames
• Sample-size analysis for confidence intervals
• Nonlinear DSGE models
• Multiple group IRT
• Panel-data Heckman-selection models
• NLMEs with lags: multiple-dose pharmacokinetic models and more
• Heteroskedastic ordered probit
• Graph sizes in inches, centimeters, and printer points
• Numerical integration in Mata
• Linear programming in Mata
• Do-file Editor: Autocompletion, syntax highlighting, and more
• Stata for Mac: Dark Mode and tabbed windows
• Set mat size obviated

Oh, and in Stata/MP, Stata matrices can now be up to 65,534 x 65,534, meaning you can fit models with over 65,000 right-hand-side variables. Meanwhile, Mata matrices remain limited only by memory.

That’s it
The highlights are 58% of what’s new in Stata 16, measured by the number of text lines required to describe them. Here is a sampling of what else is new.

• ranksum has new option exact to specify that exact p-values ​​be computed for the Wilcoxon rank-sum test.
• New setting set iterlog controls whether estimation commands display iteration logs.
• menl has new option lrtest that reports a likelihood-ratio test comparing the nonlinear mixed-effects model with the model fit by ordinary nonlinear regression.
• The bayes: prefix command now supports the new hetoprobit command so that you can fit Bayesian heteroskedastic ordered probits.
• The svy: prefix works with more estimation commands, namely, existing command hetoprobit and new commands cmmixlogit and cmxtmixlogit.
• New command export sasxport8 exports datasets to SAS XPORT Version 8 Transport format.
• New command split sample splits data into random samples. It can create simple random samples, clustered samples, and balanced random samples. Balance splitting can be used for matched-treatment assignment.

I could go on. Type help whatsnew15to16 when you get your copy of Stata 16 to find out all that’s new.

I hope you enjoy Stata 16.