mice
mice can finally predict, not just estimate, from multiply imputed data.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of dscore and statsExpressions — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The D-score reference implementation rebuilt its measurement foundation on seven countries.
dscore computes the D-score and DAZ, the GSED developmental measurement used in child-health research, and it is the reference implementation rather than one option among several. The package is at 2.1.0 after a dense 2025: the default key moved from three-country to seven-country validation data, the licence moved from AGPL to Apache 2.0, and the 2.1.0 line added per-country references, full BSID-III coverage and domain-level scoring. Breaking changes are routine here and always come with a documented fallback key or algorithm argument.
A statistics backend whose release history is mostly other people's weather
statsExpressions produces the tidy dataframes and plotmath expressions that ggstatsplot prints onto plots, and that position defines its changelog. Six of its ten most recent versions exist to absorb API changes in easystats, dplyr or purrr. Version 2.0.0 is the exception, cut to accompany ggstatsplot's own 1.0.0 and carrying pairwise Fisher's exact post hocs for contingency tables.
dscore computes the D-score and DAZ, the GSED developmental measurement used in child-health research, and it is the reference implementation rather than one option among several. The package is at 2.1.0 after a dense 2025: the default key moved from three-country to seven-country validation data, the licence moved from AGPL to Apache 2.0, and the 2.1.0 line added per-country references, full BSID-III coverage and domain-level scoring. Breaking changes are routine here and always come with a documented fallback key or algorithm argument.
The arc runs from correcting the instrument to broadening who can use it. The 2020-2024 releases were item-table repair and error correction, including a scale-factor bug that altered published standard errors; from 1.11.0 onward the work is distribution — a permissive licence, more instruments mapped in, and references resolved per country rather than pooled. That combination points at national-survey and app-embedded use rather than research-only use.
The 2.0.0 notes state that groundwork was laid for extending D-scores to older children, and 2.0.0 still tells users to fall back to gsed2406 for instruments outside GSED SF and LF. Expect the next releases to close that gap by mapping more instruments into gsed2510, with the older-age extension the likeliest headline feature.
statsExpressions produces the tidy dataframes and plotmath expressions that ggstatsplot prints onto plots, and that position defines its changelog. Six of its ten most recent versions exist to absorb API changes in easystats, dplyr or purrr. Version 2.0.0 is the exception, cut to accompany ggstatsplot's own 1.0.0 and carrying pairwise Fisher's exact post hocs for contingency tables.
This is a component settling into place beneath a larger package rather than a product with its own roadmap. New statistical content arrives rarely and narrowly — an exact-p toggle, one post-hoc function — while the recurring work is keeping expressions correct as the easystats stack shifts underneath. The one bug class it keeps returning to is rendering: p-values of exactly zero, decimal commas that plotmath parses as list separators.
Coupled this tightly, the next release is most likely another compatibility pass timed to an easystats or ggstatsplot version rather than new tests. Nothing in these entries signals an independent feature direction.
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 dscore or statsExpressions.
mice can finally predict, not just estimate, from multiply imputed data.
A market-microstructure toolkit that keeps adding estimators as the papers land.
A vowel-analysis package trimming dependencies after an email address got it archived.
The R half of the EMU speech database system, fixing what was quietly broken.
A Bayesian model-averaging package spending its 2.0 on memory, not methods.
tidyplots keeps rebuilding its own foundations rather than layering around them.
See all dscore alternatives → · See all statsExpressions alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. dscore and statsExpressions 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. dscore and statsExpressions 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.
Top dscore alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "dscore alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dscore for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top statsExpressions alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "statsExpressions alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/statsexpressions for the full list with editorial commentary on each.