parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of mutagen and spatstat.model — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
mutagen provides row-wise column-generation helpers for R data frames in the spirit of Stata's egen — gen_rowmean(), gen_rowsum(), gen_rowsd(), gen_rownonmiss() and about a dozen siblings. It reached 0.5.0 within three months of its first release, adding two or three functions each time. The most recent release adds gen_coldiff() and renames two functions to fit the naming scheme.
spatstat's inference layer builds out determinantal and cluster process fitting
spatstat.model fits point process models and provides the diagnostics that go with them. The recent window is dominated by determinantal point process work — a variance-covariance matrix and more diagnostics in 3.7-2, additional `intensity` and `repul` methods in 3.7-1, and ROC curves for determinantal models in 3.5-0. Cluster and Cox process inference has advanced in parallel, with Waagepetersen's composite likelihood arriving in 3.6-1.
mutagen provides row-wise column-generation helpers for R data frames in the spirit of Stata's egen — gen_rowmean(), gen_rowsum(), gen_rowsd(), gen_rownonmiss() and about a dozen siblings. It reached 0.5.0 within three months of its first release, adding two or three functions each time. The most recent release adds gen_coldiff() and renames two functions to fit the naming scheme.
The package is filling out a known surface rather than discovering one: the reference implementation exists in Stata, so development is a matter of working through the list. Alongside that, the naming convention is still settling — gen_rowmatch became gen_rowany, gen_percent became gen_colpercent, gen_na_listcol became gen_listcol_na — which is normal for a pre-1.0 package but means callers should expect further renames. Contributions are arriving from several first-time contributors.
The gen_col* prefix has only two members against a dozen gen_row* functions, so column-wise coverage is the obvious gap; expect it to fill before the naming stabilises for a 1.0.
spatstat.model fits point process models and provides the diagnostics that go with them. The recent window is dominated by determinantal point process work — a variance-covariance matrix and more diagnostics in 3.7-2, additional `intensity` and `repul` methods in 3.7-1, and ROC curves for determinantal models in 3.5-0. Cluster and Cox process inference has advanced in parallel, with Waagepetersen's composite likelihood arriving in 3.6-1.
The pattern is that model classes enter the package as fitting machinery first and only later gain the apparatus that makes them usable in practice — standard errors, diagnostics, residuals, model checking. Determinantal processes are visibly midway through that progression, reaching variance-covariance estimation only in the most recent release. Around this, the package has been broadening where models can be fitted at all: replicated point patterns on linear networks in 3.5-0, extended spatial logistic regression, and conversion of recursively partitioned models to tessellations.
Expect determinantal model support to keep filling out along the same path other model classes took, since variance estimation has only just arrived and partial residuals already exist for the cluster and Cox families. The entries do not signal a move into three dimensions here, unlike the geometry and simulation packages.
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 mutagen or spatstat.model.
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
rjdqa keeps refining one screen: the seasonal adjustment quality dashboard
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
See all mutagen alternatives → · See all spatstat.model alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. spatstat.model 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. spatstat.model 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 Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
Top mutagen alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mutagen alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mutagen-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top spatstat.model alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "spatstat.model alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/spatstat-model for the full list with editorial commentary on each.