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dggridR vs MVMR

A side-by-side editorial comparison of dggridR and MVMR — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

dggridR vs MVMR: at a glance

FeaturedggridRMVMR
SectorAnalyticsAnalytics
Velocity score0.00.0
Sparks · 30d00
Top themesdiscrete-global-grids, spatial-indexing, geospatial, hexagonal-gridsmendelian randomization, r, causal inference, genetics
Last editorial update48m ago1h ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is dggridR?

A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.

dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.

Read the full dggridR trajectory →

What is MVMR?

MVMR spent 2026 discovering its own estimators had been returning the wrong numbers

MVMR implements multivariable Mendelian randomization — conditional instrument strength, pleiotropy tests and heterogeneity-robust effect estimation from GWAS summary data. The package has been releasing steadily through 2026, and the substantive releases are all corrections rather than features. Two core routines were found to be computing the wrong quantity outright: qhet_mvmr() built weights from the minimised objective value instead of the minimiser, and strhet_mvmr() never minimised the Q-statistic at all.

Read the full MVMR trajectory →

dggridR vs MVMR: editorial side-by-side

D
dggridR
ANALYTICS
0.0

A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.

◆ Current state

dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.

◆ Where it's heading

The package changed hands in effect as well as in code: the 4.0.0 engine update to DGGRID v9.0b and the first real test suite were contributed by Sebastian Krantz, who also maintains the upstream engine fork, and 4.1.0's feature burst followed two weeks later. The direction of that burst is unmistakable — away from generating grids for plotting and toward using them as an indexing structure that point data gets binned into and navigated through.

◆ Prediction

Expect the cell hierarchy functions to extend to non-hexagonal apertures and multi-level traversal, closing the remaining gaps against established global indexing systems.

M
MVMR
ANALYTICS
0.0

MVMR spent 2026 discovering its own estimators had been returning the wrong numbers

◆ Current state

MVMR implements multivariable Mendelian randomization — conditional instrument strength, pleiotropy tests and heterogeneity-robust effect estimation from GWAS summary data. The package has been releasing steadily through 2026, and the substantive releases are all corrections rather than features. Two core routines were found to be computing the wrong quantity outright: qhet_mvmr() built weights from the minimised objective value instead of the minimiser, and strhet_mvmr() never minimised the Q-statistic at all.

◆ Where it's heading

This is a sustained audit, not a maintenance drift. Each release since February has fixed a specific analytical defect — omitted intercepts in the exposure-on-genotype regressions, a division by zero when a gencov list held exactly two variants, covariance matrices computed wrongly for matrix inputs, a spurious covariance warning — and several explicitly warn that reported values will differ from previous versions. The strhet_mvmr() rewrite to iteratively reweighted least squares also removes a combinatorial grid that could exhaust memory past three exposures, so the function is now usable as well as correct.

◆ Prediction

The corrections have been walking through the package function by function, and the ones with published fixes so far are the heterogeneity and covariance routines; the remaining untouched estimators are the natural next stop if the audit continues at this pace.

Alternatives to dggridR and MVMR

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 dggridR or MVMR.

See all dggridR alternatives → · See all MVMR alternatives →

Recent activity from dggridR and MVMR

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 1mo agoMVMRMVMR rewrites strhet_mvmr() after finding it never minimised Q
  2. 1mo agoMVMRMVMR corrects qhet_mvmr() weights and three covariance bugs
  3. 3mo agoMVMRNew vignette on estimating phenotypic correlations
  4. 3mo agodggridRCell neighbors, parents and children make the grid navigable
  5. 3mo agoMVMRMVMR 0.4.5
  6. 3mo agodggridRBundled DGGRID engine updated to v9.0b with a test suite
  7. 3mo agodggridRMaster merged into development ahead of the 4.0 work
  8. 4mo agoMVMRMVMR 0.4.4
  9. 5mo agoMVMRMVMR restores intercepts omitted from snpcov_mvmr() regressions

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between dggridR and MVMR?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. dggridR and MVMR 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 dggridR better than MVMR?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. dggridR and MVMR 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 dggridR?

Top dggridR alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "dggridR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dggridr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to MVMR?

Top MVMR alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "MVMR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mvmr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.