SAWULA
Newbie level 6

I have two built circuits and I am trying to integrate them. In one ciruit there is 74HC14 IC and there is a 2.2k resister between two gates (pin2 and pin 3) and in other circuit they are directly connected (pin1 and 2). I want to know why is 2.2k resister used? I know the purpose is to invert the output of first gate but why we can't directly connect those pins in both cases?