HydroPortailStats
France's national flood statistics, ported out of Fortran and into R.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
cocoon vs ggdist
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cocoon and ggdist — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
cocoon vs ggdist: at a glance
What is cocoon?
A statistics-formatting helper in maintenance mode, tracking R-devel one fix at a time
cocoon formats statistical output for manuscripts, converting model and test objects into publication-ready strings. Its surface settled early: format_stats() is a generic that dispatches on object class, introduced in 0.1.0 to supersede the earlier format_corr() and format_ttest(), and extended in 0.2.0 to cover aov, lm, glm and the lme4 and lmerTest mixed-model families. The two releases since have been single-issue compatibility fixes against changes to wilcox.test() in R-devel.
What is ggdist?
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
ggdist supplies ggplot2 with a compositional vocabulary for distributions — slabs, intervals, dotplots and the sub-geometries that combine them. The last three years moved it from a drawing library to an estimation library: bounded density estimation with Sheather-Jones bandwidth became the default, weights propagate through every density, interval and point summary, and blurred dotplots render Monte Carlo standard error as visual fuzz. The 2025 release rounds this out with per-geometry thickness subscales and settable global defaults.
cocoon vs ggdist: editorial side-by-side
cocoon
0.0INFRA · APIS
A statistics-formatting helper in maintenance mode, tracking R-devel one fix at a time
◆ Current state
cocoon formats statistical output for manuscripts, converting model and test objects into publication-ready strings. Its surface settled early: format_stats() is a generic that dispatches on object class, introduced in 0.1.0 to supersede the earlier format_corr() and format_ttest(), and extended in 0.2.0 to cover aov, lm, glm and the lme4 and lmerTest mixed-model families. The two releases since have been single-issue compatibility fixes against changes to wilcox.test() in R-devel.
◆ Where it's heading
The package reached feature completeness for its stated job quickly and has been in maintenance since early 2025. Both 0.2.1 and 0.3.1 address the same upstream moving part - how wilcox.test() computes exact versus asymptotic distributions in development versions of R - which is the shape of a package whose own code is stable and whose risk lives entirely in what it wraps. Nothing in the recent entries points at new statistical object types.
◆ Prediction
Further releases are likely to stay reactive, triggered by R-devel or dependency changes rather than by new formatting methods, unless a specific model class is requested.
ggdist
0.0INFRA · APIS
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
◆ Current state
ggdist supplies ggplot2 with a compositional vocabulary for distributions — slabs, intervals, dotplots and the sub-geometries that combine them. The last three years moved it from a drawing library to an estimation library: bounded density estimation with Sheather-Jones bandwidth became the default, weights propagate through every density, interval and point summary, and blurred dotplots render Monte Carlo standard error as visual fuzz. The 2025 release rounds this out with per-geometry thickness subscales and settable global defaults.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run in parallel and keep converging. One is statistical: pluggable density estimators arrived first, then became the default, then gained weights and quantile histograms. The other is compositional: sub-geometries acquired their own guides, then their own scales, so a slab's thickness axis is now a first-class annotated dimension. Cadence has stretched from twice-yearly to roughly annual, with the recent work tightening existing surface rather than opening new.
◆ Prediction
Subguides gained subscales a release later, so the remaining asymmetry is in the sub-geometry system rather than the statistics; expect the next release to continue that fill-in work.
Alternatives to cocoon and ggdist
Other Infra & APIs 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 cocoon or ggdist.
bsvarSIGNs
Sign, zero and narrative restrictions brought into the bsvars ecosystem.
estimatr
Fast design-based estimators for experiments, coasting on CRAN patches.
ipaddress
IP address vectors for R that hit 1.0 and then went quiet.
ltertools
A column-key toolkit for stitching decades of ecological field data into one table.
finnts
Microsoft's automated forecasting framework, still mostly a one-maintainer effort.
See all cocoon alternatives → · See all ggdist alternatives →
Recent activity from cocoon and ggdist
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agococoonTest fix for wilcox.test changes in R-devel
- 11mo agococoonSuppress an R-devel warning in htest testing
- 1y agoggdistPer-geometry thickness subscales and settable defaults
- 1y agococoonformat_stats gains regression and mixed-model methods
- 1y agococoonformat_stats generic supersedes the per-test formatters
- 1y agococoonPre-release tag of the 0.1.0 contents
- 2y agoggdistBlurred dotplots draw Monte Carlo error; weights reach every estimator ⚡
- 2y agoggdistC++ dotplot binning and safer bandwidth fallbacks
- 3y agoggdistBounded density becomes the default; existing charts change ⚡
- 3y agoggdistCategorical distributions, hex layouts, pluggable density estimators
- 4y agoggdistComputed variables shared across sub-geometries
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cocoon and ggdist?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. cocoon and ggdist 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 cocoon better than ggdist?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cocoon and ggdist 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to cocoon?
Top cocoon alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cocoon alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cocoon for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to ggdist?
Top ggdist alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggdist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggdist for the full list with editorial commentary on each.