paleobuddy
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
Comparison · Analytics
errors vs pecan
A side-by-side editorial comparison of errors and pecan — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
errors vs pecan: at a glance
What is errors?
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
errors attaches uncertainty to numeric vectors and propagates it automatically through arithmetic, as part of the r-quantities family alongside units. The propagation core is settled; recent releases concentrate on presentation and integration — PDG rounding rules in 0.4.2, decimal support in parenthesis notation in 0.4.3, and ggplot2 deprecation tracking in 0.4.1 and 0.4.4.
What is pecan?
PEcAn v1.10 makes land-management events a first-class input and parallelises the whole SDA workflow
PEcAn is a workflow framework for ecosystem modelling — it standardises meteorological and initial-condition inputs, drives a set of coupled process models such as SIPNET, ED2, BioCro and LDNDC, and runs uncertainty analysis and state data assimilation over the results. Version 1.10.0 adds an events schema with validation and a SIPNET writer, so disturbance and management events can be declared in JSON and turned into model input, and runs the entire SDA workflow in parallel. It also adds CH4 and N2O to the standard variable table and an AmeriFlux meteorological ensemble path with ERA5 fallback.
errors vs pecan: editorial side-by-side
errors
0.0ANALYTICS
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
◆ Current state
errors attaches uncertainty to numeric vectors and propagates it automatically through arithmetic, as part of the r-quantities family alongside units. The propagation core is settled; recent releases concentrate on presentation and integration — PDG rounding rules in 0.4.2, decimal support in parenthesis notation in 0.4.3, and ggplot2 deprecation tracking in 0.4.1 and 0.4.4.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through this history. One is formatting convergence: uncertainty has field-specific conventions, and the package has been absorbing them one contributed pull request at a time rather than imposing a single style. The other is keeping the errors class first-class everywhere R users work — vctrs methods for dplyr 1.0, a geom_errors() layer for ggplot2, missing-value and duplicate handling. Both are integration work, which is what a type-extension package mostly is.
◆ Prediction
Expect further formatting conventions to arrive as contributions, following PDG rounding and the decimals option, plus continued upkeep against ggplot2 aesthetic deprecations that have forced two of the last four releases.
pecan
0.0ANALYTICS
PEcAn v1.10 makes land-management events a first-class input and parallelises the whole SDA workflow
◆ Current state
PEcAn is a workflow framework for ecosystem modelling — it standardises meteorological and initial-condition inputs, drives a set of coupled process models such as SIPNET, ED2, BioCro and LDNDC, and runs uncertainty analysis and state data assimilation over the results. Version 1.10.0 adds an events schema with validation and a SIPNET writer, so disturbance and management events can be declared in JSON and turned into model input, and runs the entire SDA workflow in parallel. It also adds CH4 and N2O to the standard variable table and an AmeriFlux meteorological ensemble path with ERA5 fallback.
◆ Where it's heading
Two directions are visible. The framework keeps widening what it can represent — more standard variables, more carbon pools in BADM-based initial conditions, more coupled models — and it keeps industrialising the parts that used to be manual, from automated package documentation to qsub job-array expansion to parallel assimilation. The events schema is the first of these that gives users a declarative input format rather than a function to call, which is a different kind of extension than adding another model coupling.
◆ Prediction
The events schema currently has one model writer, for SIPNET, so the obvious next step is writers for the other coupled models — otherwise the format only benefits a single backend of the several PEcAn drives.
Alternatives to errors and pecan
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 errors or pecan.
geodist
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
CMAQ
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
protr
protr's feature set is finished; the work now is surviving Bioconductor's churn.
See all errors alternatives → · See all pecan alternatives →
Recent activity from errors and pecan
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 7mo agopecanEvents schema, parallel SDA workflow, CH4 and N2O standard variables ⚡
- 1y agoerrorserrors 0.4.4 replaces deprecated geom_errorbarh()
- 1y agopecanAutomated pkgdown docs for all packages; qsub job-array support
- 1y agopecanLDNDC coupling, soilgrids carbon extraction, SDA observation prep
- 1y agoerrorserrors 0.4.3 supports decimals in parenthesis notation
- 1y agopecanPFT-specific sensitivity analysis and BioCro 1.0 support
- 1y agopecanBioCro output renamed to PEcAn standard names; RCE fix
- 1y agopecanPEcAn.utils namespace cleanup; deprecated model2netcdf removed
- 2y agoerrorserrors 0.4.2 adds PDG rounding rules
- 2y agoerrorserrors 0.4.1 handles missing values, fixes na.rm
- 3y agoerrorserrors 0.4.0 adds geom_errors() for automatic errorbars
- 5y agoerrorserrors 0.3.6
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between errors and pecan?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. errors and pecan 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 errors better than pecan?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. errors and pecan 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 errors?
Top errors alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "errors alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/errors-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to pecan?
Top pecan alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "pecan alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/pecan-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.