simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
anyflights vs nmar
A side-by-side editorial comparison of anyflights and nmar — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
anyflights vs nmar: at a glance
What is anyflights?
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
anyflights builds nycflights13-style datasets for any US airport and year, downloading flight, weather, airline, airport, and plane tables and optionally packaging them. The four visible releases span 2022 to 2025 and are dominated by keeping those downloads working. The most recent fixes a timezone leak and gaps in hourly weather data.
What is nmar?
NMAR landed on CRAN with two nonresponse estimators behind one interface, then started tuning it.
Three releases in seven weeks, starting from nothing. The initial CRAN release implements empirical likelihood (Qin, Leung and Shao 2002) and both parametric and nonparametric exponential tilting (Riddles, Kim and Im 2016) for estimating means under nonignorable nonresponse, all reachable through a single nmar() call with formula syntax and direct support for survey.design objects. Since then the work has been operational: a configurable bootstrap backend and stricter input validation.
anyflights vs nmar: editorial side-by-side
anyflights
0.0ANALYTICS
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
◆ Current state
anyflights builds nycflights13-style datasets for any US airport and year, downloading flight, weather, airline, airport, and plane tables and optionally packaging them. The four visible releases span 2022 to 2025 and are dominated by keeping those downloads working. The most recent fixes a timezone leak and gaps in hourly weather data.
◆ Where it's heading
The function surface has been stable since 0.3; everything since concerns the fragility of the upstream sources. Broken URLs for airline data, download failures needing a session-timeout hint, planes data that stopped resolving, and weather values recorded only once an hour have each taken a release. Contributions come from teaching-adjacent users, which fits a package whose main use is generating course datasets.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to follow another upstream data-source change rather than to add a table or an argument.
nmar
0.0ANALYTICS
NMAR landed on CRAN with two nonresponse estimators behind one interface, then started tuning it.
◆ Current state
Three releases in seven weeks, starting from nothing. The initial CRAN release implements empirical likelihood (Qin, Leung and Shao 2002) and both parametric and nonparametric exponential tilting (Riddles, Kim and Im 2016) for estimating means under nonignorable nonresponse, all reachable through a single nmar() call with formula syntax and direct support for survey.design objects. Since then the work has been operational: a configurable bootstrap backend and stricter input validation.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is positioning itself as the general interface to nonignorable-nonresponse estimation rather than a reference implementation of one paper — shared architecture across engines, one formula API, and integration with the survey package so weights and stratification come for free. The follow-up releases suggest the next constraint is compute: bootstrap variance estimation is the expensive part, and it now dispatches to future.apply when a parallel plan exists.
◆ Prediction
Expect further engines under the same nmar() interface or wider bootstrap support, since the architecture was explicitly refactored to share structure across estimators.
Alternatives to anyflights and nmar
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either anyflights or nmar.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
healthyR.data
From a bundled hospital dataset to a live CMS API client.
See all anyflights alternatives → · See all nmar alternatives →
Recent activity from anyflights and nmar
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agonmarBootstrap backend now parallel-aware and configurable
- 7mo agonmarCRAN submission fixes and DOI references
- 8mo agonmarNMAR 0.1.0 ⚡
- 1y agoanyflightsWeather output pinned to GMT and hourly gaps filled
- 2y agoanyflightsPlanes data downloads restored
- 4y agoanyflightsAirline data URLs fixed and CI moved to GitHub Actions
- 4y agoanyflightsProgress reporting and faster weather retrieval
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between anyflights and nmar?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. anyflights and nmar are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is anyflights better than nmar?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. anyflights and nmar are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to anyflights?
Top anyflights alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "anyflights alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/anyflights for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to nmar?
Top nmar alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "nmar alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/nmar for the full list with editorial commentary on each.