OHPL
A 2017 chemometrics method frozen in place, visited only when CRAN changes its documentation rules.
Comparison · Analytics
hstats vs n2khab
A side-by-side editorial comparison of hstats and n2khab — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
hstats vs n2khab: at a glance
What is hstats?
hstats settled into maintenance after its 1.0 restructuring, with model coverage the only thing still growing.
hstats computes Friedman's H-statistics, partial dependence, ICE curves and permutation importance for any model exposing a prediction function. The releases in view are consolidation: performance work on plain data.frames, ICE facetting for multioutput models, ranger survival support, and a ggplot 4.0 compatibility pass in 2025. The package moved to the ModelOriented organisation in 1.2.0.
What is n2khab?
n2khab keeps retracting interpretations of habitat data it can't actually support
n2khab reads and prepares the standardised Flemish Natura 2000 habitat data sources — habitat maps, water surfaces, GRTS master grids — for reproducible analysis. Releases track the publication of new versioned data sources on Zenodo, but the more consequential ones change how the package interprets what it reads. The latest removes an argument outright after the reasoning behind it was found to be wrong.
hstats vs n2khab: editorial side-by-side
hstats
0.0ANALYTICS
hstats settled into maintenance after its 1.0 restructuring, with model coverage the only thing still growing.
◆ Current state
hstats computes Friedman's H-statistics, partial dependence, ICE curves and permutation importance for any model exposing a prediction function. The releases in view are consolidation: performance work on plain data.frames, ICE facetting for multioutput models, ranger survival support, and a ggplot 4.0 compatibility pass in 2025. The package moved to the ModelOriented organisation in 1.2.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The structural work — the hstats_matrix object, quantile approximation, revised plotting — landed in 1.0.0 just outside this window, and nothing since has changed the package's shape. What continues is model-coverage plumbing: mlr3 classification modes, ranger survival behind a survival argument, and factor predictions added in 1.1.0 then removed again in 1.2.0. The most recent releases are compatibility-driven, tracking ggplot2 rather than the interaction statistics.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to be another dependency-compatibility pass or a new model backend working out of the box, rather than new interaction statistics.
n2khab
0.0ANALYTICS
n2khab keeps retracting interpretations of habitat data it can't actually support
◆ Current state
n2khab reads and prepares the standardised Flemish Natura 2000 habitat data sources — habitat maps, water surfaces, GRTS master grids — for reproducible analysis. Releases track the publication of new versioned data sources on Zenodo, but the more consequential ones change how the package interprets what it reads. The latest removes an argument outright after the reasoning behind it was found to be wrong.
◆ Where it's heading
Two forces shape the package. The first is external: each new habitatmap or watersurfaces vintage needs a supported reader, and the package has absorbed a steady stream of them. The second is a willingness to break its own API when the ecology does not support what the code claimed — the interpreted argument removed because type 3130 occurrences cannot be resolved to a single subtype, the rbbvos+ type dropped as too loosely defined, the collapse default changed to match how users actually need the output shaped. Return structures are also being normalised so element names no longer vary with data source version.
◆ Prediction
The package has said it expects future watersurfaces_hab versions to implement collapsing in the data source itself, so the corresponding argument is a candidate for removal once that lands — the same path the interpreted argument took.
Alternatives to hstats and n2khab
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 hstats or n2khab.
fastplyr
A fast dplyr stand-in that keeps finding new places to skip work entirely.
trias
Belgium's invasive-species indicator toolkit is in steady refinement, one plotting edge case at a time.
icesSAG
The ICES stock assessment client took upload away in 2024 and spent two years giving it back.
dggridR
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
vegan
Community ecology's standard toolkit is retiring the functions a generation of scripts was built on.
See all hstats alternatives → · See all n2khab alternatives →
Recent activity from hstats and n2khab
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agon2khabn2khab 0.15.1
- 1mo agon2khabn2khab drops an argument built on a wrong ecological assumption
- 5mo agon2khabn2khab adds a reader for the watersurfaces reference points source
- 7mo agon2khabn2khab collapses watersurfaces output to unique polygon-type pairs
- 10mo agohstatsggplot 4.0 compatibility and test coverage
- 1y agon2khabSupport for watersurfaces 2024 and watersurfaces_hab v6
- 1y agon2khabn2khab supports the 2023 habitat maps and drops the rbbvos+ type
- 1y agohstatsranger survival models supported out of the box
- 2y agohstatsMoves to ModelOriented; factor predictions removed
- 2y agohstatsICE facets for multioutput models; mlr3 fixes
- 2y agohstatsFaster data.frame paths; NaN H-statistics fixed
- 2y agohstatsFactor predictions and line-style 2D partial dependence
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between hstats and n2khab?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. hstats and n2khab 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 hstats better than n2khab?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. hstats and n2khab 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.
What are the best alternatives to hstats?
Top hstats alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "hstats alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/hstats for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to n2khab?
Top n2khab alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "n2khab alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/n2khab for the full list with editorial commentary on each.