nflreadr
The nflverse data loader, whose releases are dictated by the NFL calendar and CRAN's archive policy
Comparison · Analytics
collinear vs piecepackr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of collinear and piecepackr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
collinear vs piecepackr: 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 piecepackr?
A board game graphics package runs one of the most disciplined deprecation cycles in R.
piecepackr renders game pieces — piecepack, chess, dominoes and related systems — as 2D grid graphics, 3D meshes, animations, and print-and-play PDFs. Its interface is mature enough that most releases are about managing change rather than adding capability: features get deprecated with a named replacement, live through a release or two, then get removed on schedule. The current release completes the cycle opened a year earlier, retiring the new_device and style arguments in favour of open_device and the composable font, border, background_color and edge_color set.
collinear vs piecepackr: 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.
piecepackr
0.0ANALYTICS
A board game graphics package runs one of the most disciplined deprecation cycles in R.
◆ Current state
piecepackr renders game pieces — piecepack, chess, dominoes and related systems — as 2D grid graphics, 3D meshes, animations, and print-and-play PDFs. Its interface is mature enough that most releases are about managing change rather than adding capability: features get deprecated with a named replacement, live through a release or two, then get removed on schedule. The current release completes the cycle opened a year earlier, retiring the new_device and style arguments in favour of open_device and the composable font, border, background_color and edge_color set.
◆ Where it's heading
Two things dominate the log. The first is that deprecation discipline, unusually explicit for a package this size — every removal names its successor, and deprecations announced in one release are removed in a predictable later one. The second is defensive dependency management: version bumps pinned around bugs introduced upstream in rayrender and rayvertex, a warning class for known-buggy cairo versions with an option to suppress it, and suggested packages required for metadata embedding with clear messages when they are absent. Functionality still arrives — vectorised 3D object export that finally handles composite pieces, new crosshair grobs, a reworked colour palette — but it arrives inside that maintenance rhythm rather than driving it.
◆ Prediction
The features deprecated in this release — the preview_layout component and the 4x6 print-and-play size — are on the established path toward removal in a future version, with the documented ppdf-based replacement already in place.
Alternatives to collinear and piecepackr
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 piecepackr.
susier
Fine-mapping workhorse susieR spends its releases hunting null-effect trimming bugs
UCell
A rank-based gene signature scorer that has grown by adapting to whatever object format single-cell R uses next
detectseparation
A diagnostic package that generalized past its own name, then learned to say which kind of separation it found
brglm2
A bias-reduction package reaches 1.0 by adding an estimator built for high-dimensional logistic regression
bayestools
The JAGS toolkit under RoBMA, shipping the standardization machinery its downstream rewrite needed
See all collinear alternatives → · See all piecepackr alternatives →
Recent activity from collinear and piecepackr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agopiecepackrYear-old deprecations removed; new crosshair grobs added
- 3mo agocollinearNamespace, NA and sf fixes; example data moves to spatialData
- 8mo agocollinearAdaptive thresholds, multi-response support and a new output class ⚡
- 10mo agopiecepackrExamples updated off the deprecated style argument
- 1y agopiecepackrSuit colours redrawn and piece styling made composable
- 1y agopiecepackr3D export vectorised, and composite pieces stop erroring
- 1y agocollinearCategorical responses, f_auto() defaults and future-based parallelism ⚡
- 1y agopiecepackrrayrender pinned around an upstream bug
- 2y agopiecepackrrayvertex pinned around an upstream mesh bug
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between collinear and piecepackr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. collinear and piecepackr 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 piecepackr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. collinear and piecepackr 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 piecepackr?
Top piecepackr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "piecepackr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/piecepackr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.