bbotk
bbotk is generalizing from an optimizer toolkit into an evaluation framework.
Comparison · Analytics
scales vs yardstick
A side-by-side editorial comparison of scales and yardstick — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
scales vs yardstick: at a glance
What is scales?
scales keeps widening what ggplot2 can put on an axis.
scales supplies the breaks, labels and transformations behind ggplot2's axes and legends. Unlike much of the tidyverse infrastructure around it, it still ships genuine feature work each release: native timespan handling in 1.3.0, then custom range-training classes and label_glue() in 1.4.0.
What is yardstick?
yardstick made fairness metrics a first-class part of tidymodels evaluation
yardstick supplies the metrics tidymodels evaluates models with. Its recent history is metric expansion into areas the package did not originally cover - survival analysis, model fairness, and in 1.4.0 a batch of regression and classification metrics filling remaining gaps - alongside a long deprecation cycle that finally turned errors on in 1.4.0.
scales vs yardstick: editorial side-by-side
scales
0.0ANALYTICS
scales keeps widening what ggplot2 can put on an axis.
◆ Current state
scales supplies the breaks, labels and transformations behind ggplot2's axes and legends. Unlike much of the tidyverse infrastructure around it, it still ships genuine feature work each release: native timespan handling in 1.3.0, then custom range-training classes and label_glue() in 1.4.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc runs toward extensibility and type coverage. First came built-in support for awkward types like difftime and hms; 1.4.0 inverts that by letting any third-party class participate in range training simply by implementing range() or levels(). Labelling is getting more expressive rather than merely more numerous.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued type-support and labelling work, with extension points that let downstream packages plug in their own classes instead of scales enumerating every one.
yardstick
0.0ANALYTICS
yardstick made fairness metrics a first-class part of tidymodels evaluation
◆ Current state
yardstick supplies the metrics tidymodels evaluates models with. Its recent history is metric expansion into areas the package did not originally cover - survival analysis, model fairness, and in 1.4.0 a batch of regression and classification metrics filling remaining gaps - alongside a long deprecation cycle that finally turned errors on in 1.4.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is coverage plus extensibility. Rather than adding fairness metrics one at a time, 1.3.0 shipped new_groupwise_metric() so group-aware metrics can be defined for the problem at hand, which is the more durable contribution. The parallel thread is removing hidden state: the event_first global option, deprecated in 0.0.7, took until 1.4.0 to become an error.
◆ Prediction
Expect the groupwise constructor to attract more fairness definitions than the three shipped, and the developer-facing metric creation helpers deprecated in 1.2.0 to be removed next; core metric coverage now looks close to complete.
Alternatives to scales and yardstick
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 scales or yardstick.
bayesplot
bayesplot keeps widening its posterior-check catalogue while absorbing each ggplot2 break.
animation
Contribution-driven maintenance on a package whose last structural change was magick support.
pins
pins keeps adding a storage backend per release while retiring its original API
tsibble
tsibble shipped one release in five and a half years - the data structure is finished
tune
tune extends tuning past the model itself to postprocessors, and adds a second parallel backend
See all scales alternatives → · See all yardstick alternatives →
Recent activity from scales and yardstick
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agoyardstickAdds Gini, MSE and rate metrics; old deprecations now error
- 1y agoscalesscales 1.4.0 opens range training to custom classes
- 1y agoyardstickAll messages translated to cli
- 2y agoyardstickFixes wrong weights in roc_curve_survival()
- 2y agoyardstickFairness metrics and a groupwise metric constructor ⚡
- 2y agoscalesscales 1.3.0 makes timespans first-class on axes
- 3y agoyardstickBrier score for classification; tidyselect interface throughout
- 3y agoyardstickNew maintainer; clearer metric_set() errors
- 3y agoscalesscales 1.2.1 re-documents to fix .Rd HTML issues
- 4y agoscalesscales 1.2.0 fixes currency sign order and adds scale_cut
- 6y agoscalesscales 1.1.1 fixes palette inversion and adds oob_keep()
- 6y agoscalesscales 1.1.0 reorganises breaks and labels into a naming scheme
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between scales and yardstick?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. scales and yardstick 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 scales better than yardstick?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. scales and yardstick 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 scales?
Top scales alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "scales alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/scales-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to yardstick?
Top yardstick alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "yardstick alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/yardstick for the full list with editorial commentary on each.