pr2database
The protist reference database keeps widening past the rRNA gene it was built on.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
states vs statsExpressions
A side-by-side editorial comparison of states and statsExpressions — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:maintenance
states vs statsExpressions: at a glance
What is states?
State-panel tooling holding steady since its 2020 data and ergonomics release.
states supplies the Gleditsch & Ward and Correlates of War state lists and the tooling to turn them into country-year or country-month panels, with plot_missing() for coverage checks. The substantive work landed in 2020; the releases since are compatibility fixes against ggplot2, dplyr, readr and testthat. The most recent entry is a single test repair.
What is statsExpressions?
A statistics backend whose release history is mostly other people's weather
statsExpressions produces the tidy dataframes and plotmath expressions that ggstatsplot prints onto plots, and that position defines its changelog. Six of its ten most recent versions exist to absorb API changes in easystats, dplyr or purrr. Version 2.0.0 is the exception, cut to accompany ggstatsplot's own 1.0.0 and carrying pairwise Fisher's exact post hocs for contingency tables.
states vs statsExpressions: editorial side-by-side
states
0.0INFRA · APIS
State-panel tooling holding steady since its 2020 data and ergonomics release.
◆ Current state
states supplies the Gleditsch & Ward and Correlates of War state lists and the tooling to turn them into country-year or country-month panels, with plot_missing() for coverage checks. The substantive work landed in 2020; the releases since are compatibility fixes against ggplot2, dplyr, readr and testthat. The most recent entry is a single test repair.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has reached the point where its own data and API are settled and the release trigger is upstream churn in the tidyverse. What movement there is goes toward making the two state lists interchangeable, with the microstates coding carried from G&W onto the COW data as the clearest example, rather than toward new datasets.
◆ Prediction
The next release is most likely another compatibility pass; a data refresh would be the signal that the package is active again.
statsExpressions
0.0INFRA · APIS
A statistics backend whose release history is mostly other people's weather
◆ Current state
statsExpressions produces the tidy dataframes and plotmath expressions that ggstatsplot prints onto plots, and that position defines its changelog. Six of its ten most recent versions exist to absorb API changes in easystats, dplyr or purrr. Version 2.0.0 is the exception, cut to accompany ggstatsplot's own 1.0.0 and carrying pairwise Fisher's exact post hocs for contingency tables.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a component settling into place beneath a larger package rather than a product with its own roadmap. New statistical content arrives rarely and narrowly — an exact-p toggle, one post-hoc function — while the recurring work is keeping expressions correct as the easystats stack shifts underneath. The one bug class it keeps returning to is rendering: p-values of exactly zero, decimal commas that plotmath parses as list separators.
◆ Prediction
Coupled this tightly, the next release is most likely another compatibility pass timed to an easystats or ggstatsplot version rather than new tests. Nothing in these entries signals an independent feature direction.
Alternatives to states and statsExpressions
Other Infra & APIs 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 states or statsExpressions.
ggalign
Composable aligned layouts, rebuilt on S7 while ggplot2 4.0 lands underneath.
prioritizr
Conservation planning absorbs the literature's target-setting rules as code.
jSDM
Joint species distribution models in Gibbs-sampled C++, quiet since 2023.
rsofun
An ecosystem model starts tracking carbon isotopes and land-use change.
usmap
Ten years in, US mapping splits its data out and finally adds Puerto Rico.
See all states alternatives → · See all statsExpressions alternatives →
Recent activity from states and statsExpressions
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agostatsExpressionsPairwise Fisher's post hocs for contingency tables
- 4mo agostatsExpressionsInternal maintenance only, no user-facing changes
- 6mo agostatsExpressionsAdapts to dplyr 1.2.0 and purrr 1.2.1
- 6mo agostatsExpressionsAdapts to changes in the easystats packages
- 0y agostatesplot_missing() test fixed for the next ggplot2
- 1y agostatsExpressionsFixes p-value rendering when p is exactly zero
- 1y agostatsExpressionscentrality_description() follows the new easystats API
- 2y agostatesggplot2 and dplyr deprecation cleanup
- 2y agostatesBundled state data stripped to plain data frames
- 5y agostatesMicrostate coding for COW data and state_panel() shortcuts
- 7y agostatesSimpler defaults for state_panel() and plot_missing()
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between states and statsExpressions?
Both compete on the same themes — maintenance — within Infra & APIs. states and statsExpressions 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 states better than statsExpressions?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. states and statsExpressions 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to states?
Top states alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "states alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/states for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to statsExpressions?
Top statsExpressions alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "statsExpressions alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/statsexpressions for the full list with editorial commentary on each.