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julianfaraway / faraway

R package, scripts and documentation supporting R books by Julian Faraway
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Changing the variable "gender" to "sex" in the esdcomp dataset in the faraway package #3

Open barblu opened 7 months ago

barblu commented 7 months ago

Dear Julian,

I am working with the esdcomp dataset to show an example to my students. When making the content of my materials gender neutral (or gender inclusive, if you wish), I realised that the esdcomp dataset has the variable "gender" which can take values "M" and "F". I would like to ask if it is possible to change this variable name to "sex", which would be more accurate (indeed, gender cannot assume these values, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex–gender_distinction).

Thanks! barblu

julianfaraway commented 7 months ago

I agree that sex is the appropriate name for this variable according to current terminology. But I am reluctant to change it because this will break scripts written by other users of the package.

barblu commented 7 months ago

Thanks for the quick reply. I understand the reluctance but on the other hand, I think that breaking other users' scripts would be as annoying as it currently is to see the systematic use of wrong terminology, and nothing being done to change that.