Assignment 2- One dot v. two dots in step 4 objects/macros AND stuck on step 9

[taylorburtch]

Hello everyone, When working on the assignment, we discovered that when following our printouts from class (two dots in the object/macro examples), we ran into issues with step 7 (the program could not locate the data file we needed). We got it to work by going back up into our macros and changing our object labels to one dot, I think telling the computer to look at a different (correct) level. We of course had to highlight and re-run the changes before the adjustment would make step 7 work. I hope this is correct?

Side note to Ben (and potentially to other colleagues who had trouble in the last 10 minutes of class), I did not have the updated test score data file, so I had to use the original between steps 7 and 8. For some reason, while I expected to find the updated data file when I pulled updates despite my falling behind in class, it was not there. I hope this is okay! Niki had to do this as well.

-Taylor, Jaime, Niki & Lee

[taylorburtch]

Reached impasse with step 9-- despite teamwork, google, Git "Help," extensive tinkering and the "HINT" in the assignment. It is clear that we need to somehow manipulate the former column (test_scores_new_2) using brackets in some way. Anyone get this figured out?

[btskinner]

@taylorburtch, @jharsell, @brightstone1, and @LeeDelaino (and others) per your question about the updated data file (test_scores_updated.RDS): I did not push this to your repos. This should be what you saved after running through the script in class. That said, you technically don't need test_scores_updated.RDS --- you can use the original test_scores.RDS to do the assignment (as I think you did). Just don't overwrite the original file when you save at the end (step 10).

If stuck on step 7, you can either:

1. change the relative paths (as it seems you did), or
2. check your working directory with getwd() and change with setwd() so that the relative path works

Not to be too meta, but a relative path works either by changing (1) how you get there from here or (2) where here is. (1) means change the path while (2) means changing the working directory.

[btskinner]

And per your second question, @taylorburtch, yes you are on the right track with column + bracket ([]) notation being a solution.

[taylorburtch]

At it again... but Lee and I can still not figure out how to do step 7. I am continually searching words/phrases like "copy" or "copy data" in the R search but it is returning things about databases, remotes, etc. and I am not sure how "column" and/or "data sets" (which I believe is what we are calling "test_scores_new_2") factor into this. Progress is very, very slow.

[btskinner]

In step 7, you should read in the data just like we did in class. The only real difference will be if you saved an updated data set during class (test_scores_updated.RDS); in that case, you should modify the lines from the class example to read in that data file instead.

[btskinner]

@edquant/team_class, I've added organizing_hw_example.R to your scripts directory. I've added a lot of notes to explain what I've done along the way. I show three different ways to solve step 9, each one a little more succinct. The first one is just fine, the second one a little better, and the third one more advanced. Understanding how the first and second work are all I expect right now.

If you still have questions, please post them here, come to office hours, or set up a time to meet with me. I'm closing this issue now, but again, feel free to reopen if you have more questions.