TidyDensity
A distribution catalogue that grows by one family at a time, and rarely breaks anything.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of sdsfun and semmcci — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
A spatial-statistics utility package exists to be depended on, and is built accordingly.
sdsfun collects spatial data science utilities — neighbour lists, spatial constrained clustering, discretization, dummy variable generation, geographical detector statistics and projection helpers — with the computationally heavy parts implemented in Rcpp. It was assembled quickly across late 2024, adding a function set roughly every three weeks, and has slowed since to a couple of releases a year. The most recent work is corrective: no longer initializing the RNG state at load, fixing matrix inputs misread as vectors, and clearing an Armadillo deprecation.
Monte Carlo confidence intervals for SEM, now mostly reacting to upstream deprecations
semmcci generates Monte Carlo confidence intervals for structural equation model parameters, working alongside lavaan. Its four-year release history is a run of patch versions from the jeksterslab account, each adding a function or adjusting method detail. The recent ones are quieter still: the latest addresses a lavaan::getCov() deprecation in tests, and the one before it is described only as minor method edits.
sdsfun collects spatial data science utilities — neighbour lists, spatial constrained clustering, discretization, dummy variable generation, geographical detector statistics and projection helpers — with the computationally heavy parts implemented in Rcpp. It was assembled quickly across late 2024, adding a function set roughly every three weeks, and has slowed since to a couple of releases a year. The most recent work is corrective: no longer initializing the RNG state at load, fixing matrix inputs misread as vectors, and clearing an Armadillo deprecation.
This is infrastructure for a family of packages rather than an end-user tool, and the changelog says so directly — functions were added to support gdverse and sesp, and moran_test was migrated in from geocomplexity. That migration pattern is the defining move: capability consolidates here so the downstream packages can share it instead of each carrying its own copy. Growth has slowed as that consolidation completed, leaving correctness and dependency upkeep.
Given the package moves when its dependents need something, the next release most likely brings in another shared function or responds to a downstream requirement rather than following its own plan. Armadillo and CRAN check changes remain the reliable source of maintenance work.
semmcci generates Monte Carlo confidence intervals for structural equation model parameters, working alongside lavaan. Its four-year release history is a run of patch versions from the jeksterslab account, each adding a function or adjusting method detail. The recent ones are quieter still: the latest addresses a lavaan::getCov() deprecation in tests, and the one before it is described only as minor method edits.
The functional build-out finished some time ago. MCGeneric() in 1.1.3 and Func()/MCFunc() in 1.1.4 opened the package to user-defined functions of parameters, which is the natural end point for a Monte Carlo interval tool — once arbitrary functions are supported, there is little left to add. Since then releases have tracked lavaan's changes rather than semmcci's own direction, and the gap between them has stretched from months to over a year.
Expect the next release to be triggered by another lavaan deprecation rather than by new capability.
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 sdsfun or semmcci.
A distribution catalogue that grows by one family at a time, and rarely breaks anything.
College football's open data client hit v2 — and now reports how many API calls you have left.
The USA phenology data client rebuilt its entire stack and stopped handing users -9999 as a number.
GeneNMF rebuilt how it derives meta-programs, changing every result it had produced.
Publication-ready psychology tables and plots, tracking APA style as closely as the software allows.
The area-proportional Euler diagram package is finished software, and maintained like it.
See all sdsfun alternatives → · See all semmcci alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. sdsfun and semmcci 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. sdsfun and semmcci 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.
Top sdsfun alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "sdsfun alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sdsfun for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top semmcci alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "semmcci alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/semmcci for the full list with editorial commentary on each.