mlr3proba
mlr3proba is shedding weight as its survival work moves into sibling packages
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggeffects and tidytext — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
ggeffects hands its contrast engine to modelbased and keeps the interface
ggeffects computes and plots marginal effects for a long tail of R model classes. Its recent line has two threads: steadily broadening model support and argument surface, and repeatedly absorbing breaking changes from the packages it computes on top of. In 2.2.0 it stopped absorbing them and delegated test_predictions() and johnson_neyman() to modelbased instead.
Finished, widely taught, and shipping roxygen fixes.
tidytext is the package that made unnest_tokens() and the tidy-data approach to text analysis standard, and it has reached the point where its releases contain nothing to announce. The last three are roxygen package anchors, alt text on vignette figures, and a single bug fix in one stm tidier. The most recent substantive changes were in 0.4.0 and 0.3.3 — stm tidiers for high FREX and lift words, a labels function for scale_x_reordered(), and support for tidying STM models that use content covariates.
ggeffects computes and plots marginal effects for a long tail of R model classes. Its recent line has two threads: steadily broadening model support and argument surface, and repeatedly absorbing breaking changes from the packages it computes on top of. In 2.2.0 it stopped absorbing them and delegated test_predictions() and johnson_neyman() to modelbased instead.
The package is settling into a front-end role — a consistent predict_response() interface over other people's estimation engines — rather than owning the computation itself. The 2.x releases also show a pattern of removing deprecated arguments and clarifying mixed-model semantics, so the interface is being tightened as the backend is outsourced.
Expect the features lost in the modelbased handover to return as that package's contrast and slope estimation matures, rather than being reimplemented locally.
tidytext is the package that made unnest_tokens() and the tidy-data approach to text analysis standard, and it has reached the point where its releases contain nothing to announce. The last three are roxygen package anchors, alt text on vignette figures, and a single bug fix in one stm tidier. The most recent substantive changes were in 0.4.0 and 0.3.3 — stm tidiers for high FREX and lift words, a labels function for scale_x_reordered(), and support for tidying STM models that use content covariates.
The direction is stability, and the release triggers are external. quanteda releases force updates to the dfm tidiers, a Matrix release forces another, tokenizers deprecating its tweet tokenizer forces removal of the tweet-specific functions here, and CRAN's Rd anchor requirement produces a release of its own. Nothing in the recent stream suggests new capability is planned, and for a package this embedded in teaching material that is a defensible position rather than a problem.
The entries do not support predicting new features. The likely next release is another compatibility update prompted by quanteda, stm, or a CRAN documentation requirement.
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 ggeffects or tidytext.
mlr3proba is shedding weight as its survival work moves into sibling packages
mlr3viz keeps the ecosystem's plots working while the plots themselves move out
mlr3tuning is rebuilding its async machinery under a stable public surface
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
modelbased is turning marginal effects into a full contrast grammar
easystats' parameters package absorbs one more model class every few weeks
See all ggeffects alternatives → · See all tidytext alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. ggeffects and tidytext 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. ggeffects and tidytext 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.
Top ggeffects alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggeffects alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggeffects for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top tidytext alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidytext alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidytext for the full list with editorial commentary on each.