Clarity slice_max() and slice_min() in introduction vignette

[KittJonathan]

Hello there!

While reading the "Introduction to dplyr" article (here), I came across something that I think would need correcting : in the part on the slice functions, it's noted that

slice_min() and slice_max() select rows with highest or lowest values of a variable. Note that we first must choose only the values which are not NA.

I tried running the code without filtering out NAs for the variable of interest, and it seems to work :

starwars |> slice_max(height, n = 3) and starwars |> filter(!is.na(height)) |> slice_max(height, n = 3) return the same result.

[Sal4321]

Hi @KittJonathan , It matters based on n, If you use a large number for n, the results will vary, By defaults, slice_min and slice_max sorts NA values at the end of the data, but when you are filtering out NA's they will be excluded from your data. In your example, try setting n=87 and you will observe the resulting datasets vary.

[DavisVaughan]

For tidy dev day - it's worth reading over the slice_min() and slice_max() docs along with this vignette section to see if we can clarify the behavior around NA handling and n.