------------------------------------------------------------------------------- help for didyouknow -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Did You Know?
didyouknow, [ update startup showall verify ]
Description
didyouknow displays a random fortune cookie style message showing you (hopefully) something about Stata that you did not know. Each message concludes with a web link with more information.
While you can run didyouknow at the command line, I hope you will choose decide to run it every time you start Stata. See the startup option below for more information on how to make didyouknow start up everytime you start Stata.
Options
startup This option creates a file named profile.do in the current directory which tells Stata to run didyouknow every time you start Stata. However, please take note of the following caveats.
Caveat #1. The startup option assumes that since you invoked Stata that you have not changed directories (e.g. using the cd command). If you are not sure, the safest thing to do is to quit and restart Stata and then issue the command didyouknow, startup. It will then create a file named profile.do in your startup directory that will be executed every time you start Stata.
Caveat #2. The startup option assumes that you do not already have an existing profile.do file. It will do a cursory search for profile.do and if it finds this file, will suggest that you modify your profile.do file yourself by adding a new line that reads
noisily didyouknow
Caveat #3. The startup option does not do an exhaustive search for profile.do, so if you know you have created such a file, don't trust didyouknow to find it.
update This option downloads the latest version of didyouknow from the UCLA web site. The main reason for doing this is that future updates may include additional messages.
showall This option is probably boring to most users, but it shows all of the didyouknow messages.
verify This option is probably boring to most users, but it verifies all of the web links for all of the didyouknow messages. It is really a maintenance tool for the author, but if you wish to needle the author (who does not get needled nearly enough), you can run this and report any dead links.
Removing didyouknow from start up
As described above, the startup option makes didyouknow start every time you start Stata. In the highly rare event that you no longer wish didyouknow to start every time, here is how you can remove it.
Locate your profile.do file by typing findfile profile.do. Then type doedit <fileandpathname> where <fileandpathname> is the path and file name for your profile.do. Then, remove the line that says noisily didyouknow and save the file. Then, didyouknow should no longer execute each time you start Stata.
Credits
The didyouknow program came from many inspirations.
1. The DYK program as described in User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human Computer Interaction (1986) edited by Donald Norman and Stephen Draper, in particular Chapter 17 Answers First, Then Questions by David Owen.
2. The UNIX fortune command
3. and most recently, the njc command, obtained via
net describe http://pubpages.unh.edu/~rosem/stata/njc net install njc
Author ------ Michael Mitchell Academic Technology Services UCLA mnmatucla.edu
Statistical Methods and Data Analytics
