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Comparison · Analytics
collinear vs medrobust
A side-by-side editorial comparison of collinear and medrobust — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r package
collinear vs medrobust: at a glance
What is collinear?
collinear has broken its API twice to stop making the user pick thresholds.
collinear removes multicollinearity from predictor sets through pairwise correlation and VIF filtering, with a preference order deciding which variable survives each conflict. Two major versions in thirteen months each rewrote the interface: 2.0.0 extended every function to any combination of categorical and numeric responses and predictors, and 3.0.0 moved to multiple responses, restructured the output into classed objects, and made both filtering thresholds adaptive by default. Version 3.0.1 is the first release since that is purely repair.
What is medrobust?
medrobust made its partial-identification bounds usable by giving them confidence intervals.
medrobust computes partial-identification bounds for mediation effects when exposure or mediator is differentially misclassified, part of the Data-Wise mediationverse. Its 0.2.0 release corrected three estimator defects against population oracles and added Imbens-Manski confidence intervals for the bounds; the two releases since have paired each identification path with a real public-domain dataset and a worked vignette. CRAN is deferred, with distribution through GitHub and r-universe.
collinear vs medrobust: editorial side-by-side
collinear
0.0ANALYTICS
collinear has broken its API twice to stop making the user pick thresholds.
◆ Current state
collinear removes multicollinearity from predictor sets through pairwise correlation and VIF filtering, with a preference order deciding which variable survives each conflict. Two major versions in thirteen months each rewrote the interface: 2.0.0 extended every function to any combination of categorical and numeric responses and predictors, and 3.0.0 moved to multiple responses, restructured the output into classed objects, and made both filtering thresholds adaptive by default. Version 3.0.1 is the first release since that is purely repair.
◆ Where it's heading
The through-line is removing decisions the user was never well placed to make. Preference-order functions were renamed twice — first onto a metric-and-model scheme in 2.0.0, then onto a response-type scheme in 3.0.0 — and f_auto() picks one when none is given; target encoding went from automatic to opt-in; max_cor and max_vif now default to NULL and trigger a data-driven threshold derived from the 75th percentile of pairwise correlations through a sigmoid and a fitted correlation-to-VIF mapping. Each change is defensible and each one broke callers, which is the cost of this approach.
◆ Prediction
3.0.1 moved the example datasets out into a separate spatialData package and fixed four crashes rather than adding anything, so the next release is most likely more consolidation on the 3.0 surface than a fourth interface.
medrobust
0.0ANALYTICS
medrobust made its partial-identification bounds usable by giving them confidence intervals.
◆ Current state
medrobust computes partial-identification bounds for mediation effects when exposure or mediator is differentially misclassified, part of the Data-Wise mediationverse. Its 0.2.0 release corrected three estimator defects against population oracles and added Imbens-Manski confidence intervals for the bounds; the two releases since have paired each identification path with a real public-domain dataset and a worked vignette. CRAN is deferred, with distribution through GitHub and r-universe.
◆ Where it's heading
The pattern is deliberate and symmetric: 0.3.0 shipped the mediator-side example on NCHS natality data, 0.4.0 its exposure-side mirror on NHANES, each demonstrating what the bounds do when reporting accuracy is allowed to depend on the outcome. Alongside that runs a consistent concern with failing usefully rather than loudly — bound_ne() returns NA bounds with a machine-readable reason and a typed condition instead of aborting, so a simulation replicate is recorded rather than lost, and non-finite endpoint standard errors produce a documented NA rather than a silent one. That is a package expecting to be run thousands of times inside someone else's loop.
◆ Prediction
Both identification paths now have a dataset, a vignette and interval coverage, so the next release is most likely the deferred CRAN submission rather than new methodology.
Alternatives to collinear and medrobust
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 collinear or medrobust.
quanteda
Text analysis in R keeps optimising its token internals — and builds a path out to torch
moderndive
The ModernDive teaching package learns to render inside the browser that runs its own textbook
glmbayes
A GPU-accelerated Bayesian GLM package buys its way into the standard R Bayesian toolchain
hydroloom
USGS puts a type system over its river network toolkit so errors surface at dispatch
chromConverter
The chromatography file-format translator keeps absorbing vendor formats one release at a time
See all collinear alternatives → · See all medrobust alternatives →
Recent activity from collinear and medrobust
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agomedrobustNHANES exposure-side misclassification example dataset
- 2mo agomedrobustNatality example dataset; bounds degrade instead of aborting
- 2mo agomedrobustBounds corrected against oracles; Imbens-Manski intervals added ⚡
- 3mo agocollinearNamespace, NA and sf fixes; example data moves to spatialData
- 8mo agocollinearAdaptive thresholds, multi-response support and a new output class ⚡
- 1y agocollinearCategorical responses, f_auto() defaults and future-based parallelism ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between collinear and medrobust?
Both compete on the same themes — r package — within Analytics. collinear and medrobust 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 collinear better than medrobust?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. collinear and medrobust 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 collinear?
Top collinear alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "collinear alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/collinear for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to medrobust?
Top medrobust alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "medrobust alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/medrobust for the full list with editorial commentary on each.