[Tutor] reading variables in a data set?

[Steven Buck]

 Dear Python Tutor,
I'm doing econometric work and am a new user of Python. I have read several
of the tutorials, but haven't found them useful for a newbie problem I've
encountered.
I've used a module (StataTools) from (http://presbrey.mit.edu/PyDTA ) to get
a Stata ".dta" file into Python. In Stata the data set is an NXK matrix
where N is the number of observations (households) and K is the number of
variables.
I gather it's now a list where each element of the list is an observation (a
vector) for one household.  The name of my list is "data"; I gather Python
recognizes the first observation by: data[1] .
Example,
data = [X_1, X_2, X_3, . . . . , X_N]  where each X_i for all i, is vector
of household characteristics, eg X_1 = (age_1, wage_1, . . . , residence_1).

I also have a list for variable names called "varname"; although I'm not
sure the module I used to extract the ".dta" into Python also created a
correspondence between the varname list and the data list--the python
interpreter won't print anything when I type one of the variable names, I
was hoping it would print out a vector of ages or the like.

In anycase, I'd like to make a scatter plot in pylab, but don't know how to
identify a variable in "data" (i.e.  I'd like a vector listing the ages and
another vector listing the wages of  households).  Perhaps, I need to run
subroutine to collect each relevant data point to create a new list which I
define as my variable of interest?  From the above example, I'd like to
create a list such as: age = [age_1, age_2, . . . , age_N] and likewise for
wages.

Any help you could offer would be very much appreciated.  Also, this is my
first time using the python tutor, so let me know if I've used it
appropriately or if I should change/narrow the structure of my question.

Thanks
Steve

-- 
Steven Buck
Ph.D. Student
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of California, Berkeley
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