TidyDensity
A distribution catalogue that grows by one family at a time, and rarely breaks anything.
Comparison · Analytics
bootStateSpace vs fastglm
A side-by-side editorial comparison of bootStateSpace and fastglm — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
bootStateSpace vs fastglm: at a glance
What is bootStateSpace?
A parametric bootstrap for state-space models, shipped and then left alone.
bootStateSpace generates parametric bootstrap samples for state-space models, covering fixed-parameter variants across general state-space, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, linear stochastic differential equation and vector autoregressive specifications. Its entire public history is three releases: an initial CRAN publication in January 2025, one patch adding a clean argument to the four fitting functions a month later, and a citation update in October. The methodological anchor is continuous-time mediation work published in Psychological Methods.
What is fastglm?
A fast GLM solver stops being one function and becomes a count-model family
fastglm ran C++ IRLS for standard generalized linear models for six years with almost no releases. In May 2026 it added three top-level model types — negative binomial with jointly estimated dispersion, hurdle, and zero-inflated — each with the entire fitting driver in C++ rather than an R loop around a C++ kernel. The following release generalised Firth bias reduction to every standard family across dense, sparse and streaming backends.
bootStateSpace vs fastglm: editorial side-by-side
bootStateSpace
0.0ANALYTICS
A parametric bootstrap for state-space models, shipped and then left alone.
◆ Current state
bootStateSpace generates parametric bootstrap samples for state-space models, covering fixed-parameter variants across general state-space, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, linear stochastic differential equation and vector autoregressive specifications. Its entire public history is three releases: an initial CRAN publication in January 2025, one patch adding a clean argument to the four fitting functions a month later, and a citation update in October. The methodological anchor is continuous-time mediation work published in Psychological Methods.
◆ Where it's heading
This is research software following its paper rather than a product on a roadmap — the most recent release adds nothing but a citation to the 2025 Psychological Methods article on effects in continuous-time mediation models. It sits within the same author's cluster of psychometric and continuous-time modelling packages, which is where changes to the underlying methods tend to originate. The package itself has been functionally unchanged since February 2025.
◆ Prediction
The release pattern suggests the package moves when the associated research does, so the next change most likely accompanies a new paper or a fix surfaced by a sibling package rather than arriving on its own schedule.
fastglm
0.0ANALYTICS
A fast GLM solver stops being one function and becomes a count-model family
◆ Current state
fastglm ran C++ IRLS for standard generalized linear models for six years with almost no releases. In May 2026 it added three top-level model types — negative binomial with jointly estimated dispersion, hurdle, and zero-inflated — each with the entire fitting driver in C++ rather than an R loop around a C++ kernel. The following release generalised Firth bias reduction to every standard family across dense, sparse and streaming backends.
◆ Where it's heading
The package changed what it is. Through 0.0.3 it was a drop-in replacement for glm() competing on speed; from 0.1.0 it targets the models people leave base R for — MASS::glm.nb, pscl::hurdle, pscl::zeroinfl — and reimplements their full estimation loops natively. The 0.1.1 follow-up is consolidation on that new surface: Firth generalised past binomial logit, SQUAREM acceleration on the zero-inflation EM driver, and a run of clamping guards and initialization fixes on the families most prone to overflow.
◆ Prediction
The numerical-stability work in 0.1.1 clusters on Tweedie and the inverse and sqrt link families, which suggests those paths are the newest and least exercised — expect further correctness fixes there before new model types.
Alternatives to bootStateSpace and fastglm
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 bootStateSpace or fastglm.
cfbfastr
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rnpn
The USA phenology data client rebuilt its entire stack and stopped handing users -9999 as a number.
GeneNMF
GeneNMF rebuilt how it derives meta-programs, changing every result it had produced.
rempsyc
Publication-ready psychology tables and plots, tracking APA style as closely as the software allows.
sdsfun
A spatial-statistics utility package exists to be depended on, and is built accordingly.
See all bootStateSpace alternatives → · See all fastglm alternatives →
Recent activity from bootStateSpace and fastglm
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agofastglmFirth generalised to all families, plus SQUAREM and stability fixes
- 3mo agofastglmCRAN release 0.1.0 ⚡
- 10mo agobootStateSpaceCitation added for the continuous-time mediation paper
- 1y agobootStateSpaceclean argument added across the four bootstrap functions
- 1y agobootStateSpaceInitial CRAN release of the state-space bootstrap sampler
- 4y agofastglmC++ headers exposed for linking
- 7y agofastglmFirst CRAN release of the C++ IRLS solver
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between bootStateSpace and fastglm?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. bootStateSpace and fastglm 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 bootStateSpace better than fastglm?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. bootStateSpace and fastglm 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 bootStateSpace?
Top bootStateSpace alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "bootStateSpace alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/bootstatespace for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to fastglm?
Top fastglm alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fastglm alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fastglm for the full list with editorial commentary on each.