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Comparison · Analytics
deeptime vs redist
A side-by-side editorial comparison of deeptime and redist — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
deeptime vs redist: at a glance
What is deeptime?
A geologic-time plotting layer that outgrew time axes and became a geology rendering toolkit.
deeptime extends ggplot2 with geological time scales, radial deep-time coordinates and phylogeny-aware geoms, and since 2.0.0 it also renders standardized FGDC/USGS geologic patterns as ggplot2 fills. The current 2.4.0 release adds geom_text_clade() for labeling clades on radial phylogenies and repairs long-standing coord_trans_xy() and scale-placement edge cases.
What is redist?
redist keeps rewriting the sampler underneath a district-drawing API it has held stable since 4.0.
redist simulates redistricting plans via sequential Monte Carlo, merge-split MCMC and short-burst optimization, and it is the analysis tool behind a good deal of published districting work. The user-facing shape was set by 4.0.1's constraint interface and the split of metrics into the redistmetrics package; since then the changes are in the algorithms. The most consequential recent one replaces the SMC label-counting adjustment with a backward kernel that removes approximation error outright.
deeptime vs redist: editorial side-by-side
deeptime
0.0ANALYTICS
A geologic-time plotting layer that outgrew time axes and became a geology rendering toolkit.
◆ Current state
deeptime extends ggplot2 with geological time scales, radial deep-time coordinates and phylogeny-aware geoms, and since 2.0.0 it also renders standardized FGDC/USGS geologic patterns as ggplot2 fills. The current 2.4.0 release adds geom_text_clade() for labeling clades on radial phylogenies and repairs long-standing coord_trans_xy() and scale-placement edge cases.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is converging on two jobs: being the canonical R renderer for stratigraphic drawing conventions, and keeping pace with ggplot2's own churn. A sustained deprecation program — gggeo_scale(), coord_geo_polar(), getScaleData(), now disparity_through_time() — is trimming the surface down to coord_geo(), coord_geo_radial() and the pattern functions. Roughly half of each recent release is ggplot2 4.0 compatibility work.
◆ Prediction
Expect disparity_through_time() and coord_geo_polar() to be removed outright in the next major version, and further geoms aimed at annotating radial phylogenies.
redist
0.0ANALYTICS
redist keeps rewriting the sampler underneath a district-drawing API it has held stable since 4.0.
◆ Current state
redist simulates redistricting plans via sequential Monte Carlo, merge-split MCMC and short-burst optimization, and it is the analysis tool behind a good deal of published districting work. The user-facing shape was set by 4.0.1's constraint interface and the split of metrics into the redistmetrics package; since then the changes are in the algorithms. The most consequential recent one replaces the SMC label-counting adjustment with a backward kernel that removes approximation error outright.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is toward exactness and throughput at once — the new kernel is described as both eliminating approximation error and costing far less computation, and successive releases keep adding parallelism, most recently to the flip algorithm. Feature growth has moved into the optimization side, where short-burst gained multiple independent scorers and a Pareto frontier. The release notes are not a reliable ledger: 4.3.1 ships the identical text as 4.3.0.
◆ Prediction
Expect the remaining single-threaded algorithms to gain the chains-style parallelism that flip just received, following the pattern SMC established several releases ago.
Alternatives to deeptime and redist
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 deeptime or redist.
epikit
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
broman
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
qtl
R/qtl is in pure custodial mode: every recent release answers a compiler, not a user
See all deeptime alternatives → · See all redist alternatives →
Recent activity from deeptime and redist
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agodeeptimegeom_text_clade() labels clades on radial phylogenies
- 6mo agoredistParallel chains for redist_flip()
- 6mo agoredistPatch release reusing the 4.3.0 notes
- 8mo agodeeptimeArgument renames for ggplot2 4.0 parity
- 8mo agodeeptimePattern code dictionary and time-scale theming
- 10mo agoredistSMC backward kernel removes label-counting approximation error
- 1y agodeeptimegeom_text_phylo() arrives with ggplot2 4 compatibility
- 1y agodeeptimeContrast-aware label colors across the built-in scales
- 1y agodeeptimeFGDC geologic patterns become ggplot2 fills ⚡
- 2y agoredistMulti-objective short-burst search with Pareto frontier
- 3y agoredistredist_ci interface and faster loop-erased random walk
- 4y agoredistredist_constr() unifies constraints and admits user-defined ones ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between deeptime and redist?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. deeptime and redist 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 deeptime better than redist?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. deeptime and redist 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 deeptime?
Top deeptime alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "deeptime alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/deeptime-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to redist?
Top redist alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "redist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/redist-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.