HydroPortailStats
France's national flood statistics, ported out of Fortran and into R.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
ggdist vs gkwdist
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggdist and gkwdist — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
ggdist vs gkwdist: at a glance
What is ggdist?
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
ggdist supplies ggplot2 with a compositional vocabulary for distributions — slabs, intervals, dotplots and the sub-geometries that combine them. The last three years moved it from a drawing library to an estimation library: bounded density estimation with Sheather-Jones bandwidth became the default, weights propagate through every density, interval and point summary, and blurred dotplots render Monte Carlo standard error as visual fuzz. The 2025 release rounds this out with per-geometry thickness subscales and settable global defaults.
What is gkwdist?
gkwdist keeps finding that its distributions were returning the wrong numbers.
The package implements the Generalized Kumaraswamy distribution family and its sub-families. The current release fixes six numerical defects, the most serious being that dgkw() returned zero for every input because internal helpers collided with same-named functions in R's public Rmath.h header. Log-likelihoods for three sub-families were also wrong for data near zero due to clamping instead of working in log space.
ggdist vs gkwdist: editorial side-by-side
ggdist
0.0INFRA · APIS
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
◆ Current state
ggdist supplies ggplot2 with a compositional vocabulary for distributions — slabs, intervals, dotplots and the sub-geometries that combine them. The last three years moved it from a drawing library to an estimation library: bounded density estimation with Sheather-Jones bandwidth became the default, weights propagate through every density, interval and point summary, and blurred dotplots render Monte Carlo standard error as visual fuzz. The 2025 release rounds this out with per-geometry thickness subscales and settable global defaults.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run in parallel and keep converging. One is statistical: pluggable density estimators arrived first, then became the default, then gained weights and quantile histograms. The other is compositional: sub-geometries acquired their own guides, then their own scales, so a slab's thickness axis is now a first-class annotated dimension. Cadence has stretched from twice-yearly to roughly annual, with the recent work tightening existing surface rather than opening new.
◆ Prediction
Subguides gained subscales a release later, so the remaining asymmetry is in the sub-geometry system rather than the statistics; expect the next release to continue that fill-in work.
gkwdist
2.5INFRA · APIS
gkwdist keeps finding that its distributions were returning the wrong numbers.
◆ Current state
The package implements the Generalized Kumaraswamy distribution family and its sub-families. The current release fixes six numerical defects, the most serious being that dgkw() returned zero for every input because internal helpers collided with same-named functions in R's public Rmath.h header. Log-likelihoods for three sub-families were also wrong for data near zero due to clamping instead of working in log space.
◆ Where it's heading
Every release in this window is correctness work with an unchanged public API — critical MLE fixes in 1.1.3, a CRAN timing-test patch in 1.1.4, numerical corrections in 1.1.5. The recurring theme is that analytically correct formulas were being defeated by implementation details: name collisions, sign errors returning negative infinity where positive was required, and clamping thresholds that destroyed precision in the tails. Test infrastructure added in 1.1.2 validates analytical derivatives against numerical differentiation, which is how several of these were caught.
◆ Prediction
Expect further validation-driven fixes rather than new distributions, since the derivative-checking suite added earlier is still surfacing defects in existing routines.
Alternatives to ggdist and gkwdist
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 ggdist or gkwdist.
bsvarSIGNs
Sign, zero and narrative restrictions brought into the bsvars ecosystem.
estimatr
Fast design-based estimators for experiments, coasting on CRAN patches.
ipaddress
IP address vectors for R that hit 1.0 and then went quiet.
ltertools
A column-key toolkit for stitching decades of ecological field data into one table.
finnts
Microsoft's automated forecasting framework, still mostly a one-maintainer effort.
See all ggdist alternatives → · See all gkwdist alternatives →
Recent activity from ggdist and gkwdist
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6d agogkwdistv1.1.5 — Numerical correctness fixes and componentwise derivative validation
- 2mo agogkwdistv1.1.4 — CRAN fix: skip timing-based tests on CRAN
- 2mo agogkwdistv1.1.3 — Critical MLE Bug Fixes & Numerical Corrections
- 7mo agogkwdistAdds analytical derivative validation across all sub-families
- 8mo agogkwdistRefactors the C++ backend around stable log-space utilities
- 1y agoggdistPer-geometry thickness subscales and settable defaults
- 2y agoggdistBlurred dotplots draw Monte Carlo error; weights reach every estimator ⚡
- 2y agoggdistC++ dotplot binning and safer bandwidth fallbacks
- 3y agoggdistBounded density becomes the default; existing charts change ⚡
- 3y agoggdistCategorical distributions, hex layouts, pluggable density estimators
- 4y agoggdistComputed variables shared across sub-geometries
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ggdist and gkwdist?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. gkwdist is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is ggdist better than gkwdist?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. gkwdist is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ggdist?
Top ggdist alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggdist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggdist for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to gkwdist?
Top gkwdist alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "gkwdist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gkwdist for the full list with editorial commentary on each.