The point of illegal dates brought up by Robert is a good point to include in future work.

Loading data C:\c temp\date 1.REC, please wait.. invalid year 1111, month 11, day 11

It can be a tedious work to clean out such dates, which can often result also from registry extracts from e.g. patient data.

A few comments on the set / option question in Analysis: Rule 1: Epidata Analysis should be based on proper methodology: Therefore the intention with development is always: a. Develop a good internal structure which does the job correctly. b. Create commands which make sense to users (easy to understand) c. Add proper options to the command to give the user more control d. Sometimes create parallel commands if the users are divided in two groups or the same internal command can be used for two completely different purposes. (e.g. aggregate and stattables do the same in current version) e. As part of development of each command make sure to develop test procedures to assess quality and precision. re e: Currently we have around 550 different tests made after changing anything inside the programme, but we have not had the time to develop these tests for the new table and graphics module, which has to be done before v2.0beta is released for user testing.

Rule 2: Case sensitivity of options and set: EpiData Analysis will never be case sensitive, since this creates problems for many users. Actually just now there is an internal problem with <A > fields, which I am not sure to give correct behaviour always in all functions. Users are adviced to use the function upper( ) with such fields.

Rule 3: Beginners should be helped in using the software. Aside from writing documentation and introduction notes (see www.epidata.dk/documentation.php) it is important to find a strategy of creating dialogs which assist users in getting a proper analysis done. More of this work will come in the future. Maybe we should have two types of dialogs. One with only the very few basic options and another for the experienced with all options available.

Pedro's suggestion of

But at least you must try to follow a rule: e.g. the first letter of the meaningful word affected by the options.

makes good sense. But sometimes the "sense" is bound to one language, and then which of the many languages should we choose. The choice will be much like you have seen, but avoidance of lengthy options: e.g. /m (or /M) instead of /missing or /q instead of /quiet

Options should affect only:

1.- what kind of records are affected by the command (e.g. those including missing values; or those marked as deleted); 2.- what information is included in the output (e.g. Row percents, CI, Statistics, etc..); 3.- the way the output is sorted (e.g. by labels, by count, by RR)

We can discuss whether some options divide the user base in two groups, such that a general "set" must be defined. E.g. set deleted = on or similar.

Finally let me say about confidence intervals, that I meant to write: TABLE CI FORMAT = "C()-" Which would give,. e.g.: "(0.21-0.56)" , whereas "C " would give "0.21 0.56" in the tables.

-------------------------------------------------------- Regarding Scatter graph and regression lines:

This is a good suggestion for a new feature. I suggest that such new features are reported to the Mantis database found at the epidata site in subfolder "php/mantis"

Currently there is a very unrestrictive sign-on principle for the system. (See comment below). Please respect the system as a creative tool in further development. --------------------------------------------------------

Restrictions implemented

Unfortunately a number of users (possibly only one) in the beginning telling to come from Hungary has found it interesting to send adverticements for pharmaceutical products to the EpiData Newslist increasing the number of members there by about 25-50 persons. This unfortunately is one of the annoying aspects of releasing software in an open spirit environment, since I had to spend about 4-5 hours before finding a solution to hopefully block further attempts and to remedy the "damage done". Hours which were more fruitfully used on development, user help or going for a walk near the sea in the beginning autumn .

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Kind regards

Jens lauritsen EpiData Association

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Subject: [EpiData-list] RE: EpiData-list Digest, Vol 36, Issue 6 From: epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 10:03:28 +0200 To: epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca

To: epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca

Scatter Graph Is it possible to show "linear regression" line in options graph like Epi-Info command scatter var1 var2/r

Thank you

B. Branger, Nantes, France

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