r-novice-gapminder
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swcarpentry
Update 05-data-structures-part2.Rmd
The default for stringsAsFactors was changed to FALSE in R v4.0.0 so one does not need to remember to set it any longer.
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Thanks a lot for noticing this @Aariq! It is always great when we can simplify the lesson material while keeping it up-to-date.
I noticed that we also have several instances in the file 04-data-structures-part1.Rmd where stringsAsFactors = TRUE could be dropped. It would be nice to update this file too so that the PR addresses the stringsAsFactors update in one go (and maybe we could have a Tip box after the first place in the lesson where stringsAsFactors = TRUE used to be necessary to indicate that older versions of R might cause trouble because of the old default).
I will try to update the PR within the next few days, but feel free to update it before if you would like!
I actually think the appearances of stringsAsFactors in 04-data-structures-part1.Rmd are "fine". Since the new default for stringsAsFactors is FALSE, it does need to be set to TRUE if you want factors in the data frame. Personally, I don't think it's a great idea to be teaching non-default usages of read.csv() in a first lesson about reading in data, but that change would require a more significant re-writing of the lesson and maybe not everyone agrees.
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this @Aariq! And thank you for your explanation, it is true that with the new default the stringsAsFactors = TRUE in 04-data-structures-part1.Rmd are actually required to keep the rest of the lesson working.
I agree with you that teaching to set strings as factors when reading in data might not be the best pedagogical choice. Maybe this is something that we can address in a later update of the lesson.
I took the liberty to update your PR by also removing two unnecessary occurrences of stringsAsFactors = FALSE in calls to data.frame() in 05-data-structures-part2.Rmd, since data.frame() is not using stringsAsFactors = TRUE as default anymore.
Thank you for your contribution @Aariq!
LGTM for merging (cc @skanwal or @naupaka for confirmation).