HydroPortailStats
France's national flood statistics, ported out of Fortran and into R.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
ggdist vs Luminescence
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggdist and Luminescence — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
ggdist vs Luminescence: 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 Luminescence?
Luminescence is revisiting the statistical assumptions baked into its dose-response fits.
The package provides luminescence dating analysis for the geochronology community — signal import from several instrument formats, dose-response curve fitting, and a large library of analysis routines. The current release changes how fitting weights are handled by default, on the reasoning that individual relative uncertainties do not in fact scale with dose as the previous approach assumed. Several releases in this window are historical versions backfilled into the feed, so their timestamps sit within minutes of each other and do not reflect when the work shipped.
ggdist vs Luminescence: 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.
Luminescence
2.5INFRA · APIS
Luminescence is revisiting the statistical assumptions baked into its dose-response fits.
◆ Current state
The package provides luminescence dating analysis for the geochronology community — signal import from several instrument formats, dose-response curve fitting, and a large library of analysis routines. The current release changes how fitting weights are handled by default, on the reasoning that individual relative uncertainties do not in fact scale with dose as the previous approach assumed. Several releases in this window are historical versions backfilled into the feed, so their timestamps sit within minutes of each other and do not reflect when the work shipped.
◆ Where it's heading
Two kinds of change dominate. The first is deliberate breaking changes made for correctness or consistency: the weighting rework, and import functions now uniformly appending the detector to record types so all formats behave as one always did. The second is a steady stream of new analysis functions contributed by the wider research community, covering crosstalk correction, spatial autocorrelation on grain discs, and incomplete bleaching models. Deprecated functions are being removed on a clear schedule rather than left indefinitely.
◆ Prediction
Expect further consolidation of defaults that were inherited rather than chosen, since the weighting change is framed as correcting earlier reasoning rather than adding an option.
Alternatives to ggdist and Luminescence
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 Luminescence.
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 Luminescence alternatives →
Recent activity from ggdist and Luminescence
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 26d agoLuminescenceReworks dose-response fitting weights, changing prior defaults
- 4mo agoLuminescenceFixes an uninitialised array and background overcounting
- 5mo agoLuminescenceImport functions now append detector type to record names
- 7mo agoLuminescenceAdds crosstalk correction, Moran's I, and dose-response fitting
- 7mo agoLuminescenceFixes baSAR reporting, fading input checks, and plot regressions
- 7mo agoLuminescenceAdds automatic background subtraction and record removal helpers
- 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 Luminescence?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. Luminescence 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 Luminescence?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Luminescence 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 Luminescence?
Top Luminescence alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Luminescence alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/luminescence for the full list with editorial commentary on each.