Stata is a powerful and user-friendly package for setting up data and performing statistical analysis. Nevertheless, some features often cause unexpected errors that users either fail to notice or spend hours trying to correct. In this article, I list my top 10 Stata “gotchas” and suggest ways to combat them. Awareness of these “gotchas” will hopefully help newer users—particularly those making their first forays into Stata programming—avoid the most common pitfalls.
