Diversity Claim

[GmanB3398]

On your paragraph about diversity, I am not sure where this claim that people say that tidy is mainly for making it easier for women and minorities. This (strawman) argument seems incongruous with your evidence based approach you use in the rest of the essay. I would reconsider leaving this paragraph in, as it goes against the exact point you make in the next section.

[matloff]

Actually, the claim that Tidy has brought large numbers of women and minorities to R
has come up many times in the last couple of weeks on Twitter. It has also been stated before by people affiliated with R-Ladies and, for that matter, connected to RStudio, both publicly and to me in private.

[DianeBeldame]

Unfortunately, anecdote is not data

[matloff]

An essay is not a research paper.

[DianeBeldame]

That's not an excuse for argumentum ad verecundiam

[pmarchand1]

That part of the R community was found to be more inclusive by many people, and that the tools were found to be easier to learn, doesn't imply what you're saying in the essay. Maybe the same people are making both pedagogical efforts and efforts at creating a more positive community at the same time.

[matloff]

GmanB3398, it wouldn't matter how footnotes, citations and so I would include in my essay. The RStudio loyalists wouldn't accept it. I've expressed my thoughts here, and that's it, no aspiration for proselytizing.

[matloff]

My point about tapply() was that the so-called "base-R solution" for "Summarise rows within groups" appears (sorry, only skimmed it) to be a typical tapply() situation, far simpler than the claimed "base-R solution" and certainly simpler and more obvious to code.

[drag05]

@GmanB3398
I agree with your point that the diversity argument seems a bit forced.
@DianeBeldame
I think anecdote is data and I don't appreciate the veiled push for twitter as being an authority.
@matloff
Beautiful article! Teachability is a valid entry point to this more insidious internal split (takeover) of R.

[DianeBeldame]

@drag05 I don't care about what you think and I don't care if you appreciate anything I've written or not.

There is evidence that the R community is more diverse than others in STEM. Period.
And :

• correlation is not causality
• anecdote is not data. Period again.

Writing an essay doesn't mean armchair philosophy.

Thing is, I run an R training organisation. We've trained +2000 adults so far in small groups (half a dozen) for +20k hours*learners and I have evidence that Rmd first + tidyverse first + documentation first approaches combined to teaching techniques coming from neurolearning improves learning experience and upskilling.

Almost forgot...we don't teach for loops or matrix since 2018. Yet, our learners build packages on a daily basis as naturally as breathing to ship them in production. I would love to tell you more about $ but you're not ready...

It's not because you've learnt it the hard way you should do the same and perpetrate misconceptions and unfounded beliefs.

But it's common wisdom that @matloff is more prompt to criticize than reassess himself : 'You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink'

[drag05]

@DianeBeldame : Just take a deep breath ...

[matloff]

Well, @DianeBeldame, I've been reassessing myself all my life. :-) I've gone from FORTRAN to C to Perl to Python to S to R, both in teaching and in my own use. Today I use/teach mainly R and Python. I've also been a huge supporter of RStudio, both the product and the RS staff, from the very beginning. Accusing someone of inability to change is a standard method of attack, but it doesn't work here, sorry. I hope you'll avoid ad hominem.

[aphalo]

@DianeBeldame @matloff In my experience the teachers' view of what is difficult or not very easily is taken up by his/hers students. So, this is something to consider in this discussion. Another, more important question is this: knowing the tidyverse is a very different thing to knowing the R language. The tidyverse has become a new language or grammar built on top of R. To me someone who does not know about R's for loop construct, matrix, arrays or the various apply functions does not know the R language, point. If I interpret Matloff's view correctly he says that starting by teaching the tidyverse is not a good way of teaching the R language. Something, I agree with. @DianeBeldame In spite of your strong words, in my view your own argument confirms this: you are stopping short of teaching your students the R language! You teach them the tidyverse.

[matloff]

Yes, my primary concern is for new learners of R.

[drag05]

@matloff

"Yes, my primary concern is for new learners of R"

.... and as Teacher, you give them the opportunity of making an informed choice while majority of tidyverse teachers - as their stance and language used in this and other threads illustrate - resent it .

One could suspect an aliasing pecuniary factor here. Maybe this is one case where correlation is causation (sic) since base R requires fewer lessons to master.

[ratnanil]

This sums up everything which is wrong if you're dogmatic about the tidyverse (or anything, really):

Almost forgot...we don't teach for loops or matrix since 2018. [...] I would love to tell you more about $ but you're not ready...

[drag05]

@ratnanil Yeah! Will I ever be ready for $$$$ !? For sure @DianeBeldame could share some tips