tern.rbmi
Reference-based multiple imputation tables, shipping only what CRAN checks demand.
Comparison · Analytics
cholera vs paleobuddy
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cholera and paleobuddy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
cholera vs paleobuddy: at a glance
What is cholera?
John Snow's 1854 cholera map is being rebuilt on real geographic coordinates.
cholera packages the Broad Street cholera outbreak data with tools to recompute pump neighbourhoods by Voronoi and walking distance. The last two releases carried the dataset from Snow's original plate coordinates onto georeferenced longitude and latitude, exposed through a latlong = TRUE argument on most functions. Function naming and plotting APIs are being tidied at the same pace.
What is paleobuddy?
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
paleobuddy simulates diversification, fossil records and phylogenetic trees, with rates that can be arbitrary functions of time — its founding idea, implemented through rexp.var() generalizing exponential and Weibull draws. The 1.1.0 release adds state-dependent speciation and extinction simulation at roughly MuHiSSE generality, and lets simulations stop at a target number of extant species instead of conditioning on time.
cholera vs paleobuddy: editorial side-by-side
cholera
0.0ANALYTICS
John Snow's 1854 cholera map is being rebuilt on real geographic coordinates.
◆ Current state
cholera packages the Broad Street cholera outbreak data with tools to recompute pump neighbourhoods by Voronoi and walking distance. The last two releases carried the dataset from Snow's original plate coordinates onto georeferenced longitude and latitude, exposed through a latlong = TRUE argument on most functions. Function naming and plotting APIs are being tidied at the same pace.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is clear and sustained: convert a historical, self-referential coordinate system into one that interoperates with modern GIS. Each release extends latlong coverage to more datasets — pumps, roads, landmarks, and now the plague pit and map frame — while archiving the older prototypes. Parallelisation and the walking-distance solver were reworked along the way to keep the heavier computations usable.
◆ Prediction
Remaining non-georeferenced pieces and the archived latlong prototypes are the obvious next targets, alongside continued consolidation of the add*()/plot*() function pairs.
paleobuddy
0.0ANALYTICS
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
◆ Current state
paleobuddy simulates diversification, fossil records and phylogenetic trees, with rates that can be arbitrary functions of time — its founding idea, implemented through rexp.var() generalizing exponential and Weibull draws. The 1.1.0 release adds state-dependent speciation and extinction simulation at roughly MuHiSSE generality, and lets simulations stop at a target number of extant species instead of conditioning on time.
◆ Where it's heading
Releases track the maintainer's publications rather than a product cadence — 1.0.0 accompanied the MEE manuscript, 1.0.0.1 exists purely as a Zenodo citation anchor, and 1.1.0 is stated as going with a paper on SSE model accuracy for trees including fossil data. That framing sets the direction: the package grows whichever capability the next study needs to test. The stated SSE limits, no quantitative traits and no cladogenetic transitions, mark exactly where that boundary currently sits.
◆ Prediction
Quantitative traits and cladogenetic transitions are named as missing, which makes them the obvious next targets, though on this history the timing will follow a paper rather than a roadmap.
Alternatives to cholera and paleobuddy
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 cholera or paleobuddy.
tern.mmrm
An MMRM tabulation package that has published nothing since its 2024 CRAN releases.
ggmagnify
A single-purpose ggplot2 inset tool, refining the same three arguments.
symengine
An R symbolic-maths binding whose changelog is really the C++ core's release notes.
gtfstools
gtfstools stopped guarding its own object model and started accepting everyone else's.
quantities
The glue package that makes R carry units and uncertainty through the same calculation.
See all cholera alternatives → · See all paleobuddy alternatives →
Recent activity from cholera and paleobuddy
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1y agopaleobuddypaleobuddy 1.1.0 adds SSE trait-dependent simulation ⚡
- 1y agocholeraGeoreferences the plague pit and road segments
- 1y agocholeraLongitude and latitude support across nearly all data and functions ⚡
- 3y agocholeraFirst longitude/latitude prototypes and new distance functions
- 3y agopaleobuddypaleobuddy 1.0.0.1: Zenodo citation release
- 4y agopaleobuddypaleobuddy 1.0.0: first release with time-varying rates
- 4y agocholeraAdds streetNames(); fixes Delaunay and pump-token plotting
- 5y agocholeraIsochrone helpers, weather data and Voronoi location options
- 6y agocholeraParallel computation support on Windows
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cholera and paleobuddy?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. cholera and paleobuddy 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 cholera better than paleobuddy?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cholera and paleobuddy 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 cholera?
Top cholera alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cholera alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cholera-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to paleobuddy?
Top paleobuddy alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "paleobuddy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/paleobuddy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.