rjd3highfreq
rjd3highfreq ships whatever the Java side ships, and only occasionally says what that was.
Comparison · Analytics
ggstatsplot vs vellum
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggstatsplot and vellum — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
ggstatsplot vs vellum: at a glance
What is ggstatsplot?
ggstatsplot reached 1.0 by adding tests, having outsourced its statistics years ago.
ggstatsplot produces ggplot2 graphics with statistical test results embedded in the subtitle and caption — comparisons, correlations, contingency tables, histograms. Since the 2019 refactoring that moved all statistical computation into the separate statsExpressions package, its own release notes have been dominated by upstream tracking: adapting to ggplot2, dplyr, purrr and easystats changes. The 1.0.0 release in April 2026 breaks that run with real additions to the contingency-table functions.
What is vellum?
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
The rendering engine shipped nine releases in the two weeks around the end of July, six of them on a single day. Almost every entry is a correctness fix in a capability that worked when drawn and failed when measured, or worked in isolation and failed in composition. The release notes are unusually forensic: each one states the mechanism, the observable symptom, and why the fix mirrors the draw path rather than reimplementing it.
ggstatsplot vs vellum: editorial side-by-side
ggstatsplot
0.0ANALYTICS
ggstatsplot reached 1.0 by adding tests, having outsourced its statistics years ago.
◆ Current state
ggstatsplot produces ggplot2 graphics with statistical test results embedded in the subtitle and caption — comparisons, correlations, contingency tables, histograms. Since the 2019 refactoring that moved all statistical computation into the separate statsExpressions package, its own release notes have been dominated by upstream tracking: adapting to ggplot2, dplyr, purrr and easystats changes. The 1.0.0 release in April 2026 breaks that run with real additions to the contingency-table functions.
◆ Where it's heading
The architecture explains the cadence. With statistics living in statsExpressions, ggstatsplot's own releases are mostly the tax of sitting on top of a fast-moving plotting and tidyverse stack — five of the six most recent entries change nothing a user would notice. When substantive work does arrive it clusters in the plotting layer's coverage of test families, as in 1.0.0's one-sample goodness-of-fit support and pairwise contingency analyses. The maintainer is also visibly deliberate about scope, having removed the normality-curve overlay in 0.12.4 for being unrelated to the analysis in question.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued parity work across the plot family — features that exist in one function being extended to its siblings, as goodness-of-fit support moved from ggpiestats to ggbarstats — punctuated by maintenance releases tracking ggplot2 and easystats.
vellum
5.0ANALYTICS
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
◆ Current state
The rendering engine shipped nine releases in the two weeks around the end of July, six of them on a single day. Almost every entry is a correctness fix in a capability that worked when drawn and failed when measured, or worked in isolation and failed in composition. The release notes are unusually forensic: each one states the mechanism, the observable symptom, and why the fix mirrors the draw path rather than reimplementing it.
◆ Where it's heading
The pivotal detail is stated outright in 0.6.3 — the first bug in the series found by using the engine from vellumplot rather than testing it in isolation. Every release since names the downstream as the source: the contrast rule's false positives, the lint rules that fired on all five sample plots, the keyed roundrect batch. A rendering engine with a real grammar built on top of it is now getting the integration coverage that unit tests structurally cannot provide, and the fixes are converging on one theme: the measurement path and the draw path must not drift.
◆ Prediction
Expect the release rate to fall as the vellumplot integration surface is exhausted, with remaining work concentrated in the lint rule set now that it is meant to gate builds rather than just inform.
Alternatives to ggstatsplot and vellum
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 ggstatsplot or vellum.
audubon
audubon's release feed is almost entirely Renovate bumping the JavaScript toolchain behind its Japanese text splitter.
affiner
affiner is quietly turning a grid transformation helper into a small computational geometry library.
ageproR
ageproR spent two years chasing a moving file format, then added the recruitment models that justify the effort.
r-ledger
ledger adds a Rust toolchain fallback, so beancount imports work whether or not the Python tooling is installed.
gridpattern
gridpattern keeps widening its catalogue, and the newest patterns finally use the device's own line rendering.
See all ggstatsplot alternatives → · See all vellum alternatives →
Recent activity from ggstatsplot and vellum
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11d agovellumLinter grows to 20 rules and stops firing on every plot
- 13d agovellumAnimated SVGs no longer blink once and vanish or play in reverse
- 13d agovellumPick table now reports device pixels instead of two coordinate systems
- 14d agovellumContrast rule stops flagging every plot; gridlines become PDF artifacts
- 14d agovellumgrobwidth and grobheight now measure wrapped text, not the unwrapped line
- 14d agovellumKeyed roundrect becomes a real batch after downstream integration exposes it
- 3mo agoggstatsplotPairwise contingency tests and one-sample goodness-of-fit
- 4mo agoggstatsplotInternal maintenance only
- 6mo agoggstatsplotAdapted to dplyr 1.2.0 and purrr 1.2.1
- 8mo agoggstatsplotContributor list updated in DESCRIPTION
- 10mo agoggstatsplotSecondary axis label parsing fixed in gghistostats
- 11mo agoggstatsplotAdapted to the latest ggplot2 release
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ggstatsplot and vellum?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. vellum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 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 ggstatsplot better than vellum?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 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 Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ggstatsplot?
Top ggstatsplot alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggstatsplot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggstatsplot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vellum?
Top vellum alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellum alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellum-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.