# Why does the importance parameter influences performance of Random Forest method in R?

When using random forests in R I came across the following situation:

    library(randomForest)
set.seed(42)
data(iris)
rf_noImportance <- randomForest(Species~.,data=iris,ntree=100,importance=F)
print(table(predict(rf_noImportance),iris$Species))  Output:  setosa versicolor virginica setosa 50 0 0 versicolor 0 47 3 virginica 0 3 47  and  library(randomForest) set.seed(42) data(iris) rf_importance <- randomForest(Species~.,data=iris,ntree=100,importance=T) print(table(predict(rf_importance),iris$Species))


Output:

            setosa versicolor virginica
setosa         50          0         0
versicolor      0         47         4
virginica       0          3        46


In the first example I set importance = FALSE and in the second example TRUE. From my understanding this should not affect the resulting prediction. There's also no indication for that behavior in the documentation.

According to this cross-validated post the importance flag should not influence the predictions, but it clearly does in the example above.

So why is the importance parameter of the randomForest method influencing the performance of the model?