From murdoch.duncan at gmail.com  Sun Feb 10 21:37:23 2013
From: murdoch.duncan at gmail.com (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:37:23 -0500
Subject: [Rd] Regression stars
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Message-ID: <51180503.1080605@gmail.com>

On 13-02-09 3:49 PM, Tim Triche, Jr. wrote:
> To clarify, I favor changing the defaults for stringsAsFactors and
> show.signif.stars to FALSE in R-3.0.0, and view any attempt to remove
> either functionality as a seemingly simple but fundamentally misguided idea.

Both of these were discussed by R Core.  I think it's unlikely the 
default for stringsAsFactors will be changed (some R Core members like 
the current behaviour), but it's fairly likely the show.signif.stars 
default will change.  (That's if someone gets around to it:  I 
personally don't care about that one.  P-values are commonly used 
statistics, and the stars are just a simple graphical display of them. 
I find some p-values to be useful, and the display to be harmless.)

I think it's really unlikely the more extreme changes (i.e. dropping 
show.signif.stars completely, or dropping p-values) will happen.

Regarding stringsAsFactors:  I'm not going to defend keeping it as is, 
I'll let the people who like it defend it.  What I will likely do is 
make a few changes so that character vectors are automatically changed 
to factors in modelling functions, so that operating with 
stringsAsFactors=FALSE doesn't trigger silly warnings.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> This is just my opinion, of course.  The change could easily be accompanied
> by a startup notice or release notes indicating that the changes have been
> made, and can be reverted to past behavior if the user so desires.  Perhaps
> more users will investigate the various settings, as a happy side effect.
>
> My thanks to everyone who spends time supporting and working on R-core.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Tim Triche, Jr. <tim.triche at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Changing the default for show.signif.stars should be sufficient to ensure
>> that, if people are going to get themselves into trouble, they will have to
>> do it on purpose.  It's just a visual cue; removing it will not remove the
>> underlying issue, namely blind acceptance of unlikely null models and
>> distributions.
>>
>> For any complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and
>> wrong.  As grants and careers can depend on these magic numbers, Upton
>> Sinclair might save everyone some trouble... It is difficult to get a man
>> to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not
>> understanding.
>>
>> stringsAsFactors, however, is responsible for an endless stream of mildly
>> irritating misunderstandings, and defaulting that to FALSE would be very
>> nice.
>>
>> Just my $0.02.  Defaults are one of the most powerful forces in the
>> universe.
>>
>> Also, I liked your book.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 10:48 AM, Norm Matloff <matloff at cs.ucdavis.edu>wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for bringing this up, Frank.
>>>
>>> Since many of us are "educators," I'd like to suggest a bolder approach.
>>> Discontinue even offering the stars as an option.  Sadly, we can't stop
>>> reporting p-values, as the world expects them, but does R need to cater
>>> to that attitude by offering star display?  For that matter, why not
>>> have R report confidence intervals as a default?
>>>
>>> Many years ago, I wrote a short textbook on stat, and included a
>>> substantial section on the dangers of significance testing.  All three
>>> internal reviewers liked it, but the funny part is that all three said,
>>> "I agree with this, but no one else will." :-)
>>>
>>> Norm
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *A model is a lie that helps you see the truth.*
>> *
>> *
>> Howard Skipper<http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/31/9/1173.full.pdf>
>>
>
>
>



[Rd] Regression stars
Duncan Murdoch