simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
rmediation vs vinereg
A side-by-side editorial comparison of rmediation and vinereg — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
rmediation vs vinereg: at a glance
What is rmediation?
RMediation shipped a three-normal CDF, then found it was silently wrong.
RMediation is a long-standing CRAN package for confidence intervals on mediated effects, now built on an S7 class hierarchy. Over eight weeks it added ProductNormal3 for serial indirect effects of the form a1*a2*b, folded the engine into the existing pprodnormal naming family, and then replaced that engine outright after finding it returned wrong probabilities without warning. The dev branch is at 1.7.0; CRAN still serves 1.6.1.
What is vinereg?
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
vinereg fits D-vine copula-based regression models on top of rvinecopulib and kde1d, in Thomas Nagler's package stack. The January 2025 pair - 0.10.0 and 0.11.0 tagged the same day - adds a pdf() function and then fixes conditional density computation for discrete variables while requiring the newer kde1d. Release notes run to one or two bullets each.
rmediation vs vinereg: editorial side-by-side
rmediation
3.8ANALYTICS
RMediation shipped a three-normal CDF, then found it was silently wrong.
◆ Current state
RMediation is a long-standing CRAN package for confidence intervals on mediated effects, now built on an S7 class hierarchy. Over eight weeks it added ProductNormal3 for serial indirect effects of the form a1*a2*b, folded the engine into the existing pprodnormal naming family, and then replaced that engine outright after finding it returned wrong probabilities without warning. The dev branch is at 1.7.0; CRAN still serves 1.6.1.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is moving from a hand-rolled numerical layer to one that checks itself: the new default integrator escalates its node count until successive rules agree, warns when it hits the cap instead of returning a number, and exposes a diagnostics argument for the convergence estimate. The correctness fix went to dev ahead of the CRAN window rather than being held for it, which suggests wrong-answer bugs are treated as release-blocking regardless of cadence. Serial mediation is where the new surface area is concentrated.
◆ Prediction
1.7.0 exists specifically to land before CRAN's 2026-08-21 update window, so the next move is a CRAN submission promoting it to main; whether hcubature survives past that as a cross-check option is the open question.
vinereg
0.0ANALYTICS
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
◆ Current state
vinereg fits D-vine copula-based regression models on top of rvinecopulib and kde1d, in Thomas Nagler's package stack. The January 2025 pair - 0.10.0 and 0.11.0 tagged the same day - adds a pdf() function and then fixes conditional density computation for discrete variables while requiring the newer kde1d. Release notes run to one or two bullets each.
◆ Where it's heading
Work has concentrated on evaluation rather than fitting: cll() in 0.9.0, pdf() in 0.10.0, and the discrete-variable correction in 0.11.0 all concern what can be computed from a model already fitted. Releases arrive in same-day pairs, and the notes are terse enough that 0.10.0 reuses 0.9.0's wording verbatim, describing pdf() with cll()'s sentence. Version floors also track the sibling packages - kde1d here, rvinecopulib in 0.8.3.
◆ Prediction
Given the shared release rhythm across the stack, the next entry is as likely to be a dependency-driven bump as a new function; the discrete-variable path is the one area these notes show as recently unstable.
Alternatives to rmediation and vinereg
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 rmediation or vinereg.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
healthyR.data
From a bundled hospital dataset to a live CMS API client.
See all rmediation alternatives → · See all vinereg alternatives →
Recent activity from rmediation and vinereg
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 16h agormediationv1.7.0 — pprodnormal3() correctness fix ⚡
- 1mo agormediationp_prod3() renamed into the pprodnormal family
- 1mo agormediationProductNormal3: exact CDF for a product of three normals ⚡
- 2mo agormediationmedfit reaches CRAN; Remotes pointer dropped
- 1y agovineregDiscrete conditional densities fixed; kde1d 1.1.0 required
- 1y agovineregpdf() added for conditional density
- 2y agovineregBoost compile flag and a weights error fixed
- 2y agovineregcll() computes conditional log-likelihood
- 4y agovineregvinecopulib floor raised for RcppThread compatibility
- 4y agovineregcpit() fixed and external marginals allowed via uscale
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between rmediation and vinereg?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. rmediation is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 3.8 vs 0.0), with 1 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 rmediation better than vinereg?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. rmediation is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 3.8 vs 0.0), with 1 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 rmediation?
Top rmediation alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rmediation alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rmediation for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vinereg?
Top vinereg alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vinereg alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vinereg for the full list with editorial commentary on each.