HydroPortailStats
France's national flood statistics, ported out of Fortran and into R.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
ggdist vs jstable
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggdist and jstable — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
ggdist vs jstable: 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 jstable?
A clinical table generator paying down years of edge cases in survey-weighted models
jstable turns regression and survival models into the formatted tables medical papers publish, wrapping coxph, glm, geeglm, lmer and their survey-weighted counterparts. The recent line is almost entirely correction work, concentrated in two places: the .display family and the TableSubgroup family. Version 1.3.25 alone fixed quasibinomial support for survey-weighted logistic regression, automatic factor-to-numeric outcome conversion for svyglm, weighted-versus-original sample counts in the n row, data.table input handling, and Overall column labelling.
ggdist vs jstable: 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.
jstable
0.0INFRA · APIS
A clinical table generator paying down years of edge cases in survey-weighted models
◆ Current state
jstable turns regression and survival models into the formatted tables medical papers publish, wrapping coxph, glm, geeglm, lmer and their survey-weighted counterparts. The recent line is almost entirely correction work, concentrated in two places: the .display family and the TableSubgroup family. Version 1.3.25 alone fixed quasibinomial support for survey-weighted logistic regression, automatic factor-to-numeric outcome conversion for svyglm, weighted-versus-original sample counts in the n row, data.table input handling, and Overall column labelling.
◆ Where it's heading
Each CRAN release bundles several GitHub patch versions, so the notes read as rolled-up fix lists rather than feature announcements. The substantive thread is pcut.univariate, introduced across seven display functions in 1.3.11 to allow multivariable analysis restricted to significant variables, and repaired repeatedly since as it collided with interaction terms, single-variable selections, clustered models and data.table inputs. The survey-weighted path is the other recurring source: counts, labels and family handling that worked for unweighted data kept failing once weights were involved.
◆ Prediction
Expect further patches in the survey-weighted subgroup functions, since 1.3.25 fixed four separate issues there and each recent release has surfaced more in the same area.
Alternatives to ggdist and jstable
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 jstable.
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 jstable alternatives →
Recent activity from ggdist and jstable
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agojstableSurvey-weighted logistic regression and sample counts corrected
- 6mo agojstableCompeting-risk counts drawn from original rather than transformed data
- 9mo agojstableMulti-state Cox models detected without a manual flag
- 10mo agojstableWide fix pass across the display functions
- 0y agojstableCrude p-values computed from raw data via data_for_univariate
- 1y agoggdistPer-geometry thickness subscales and settable defaults
- 1y agojstableSignificance-filtered multivariable analysis added across seven functions
- 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 jstable?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. ggdist and jstable 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 ggdist better than jstable?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. ggdist and jstable 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.
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 jstable?
Top jstable alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "jstable alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/jstable for the full list with editorial commentary on each.