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Comparison · Infra & APIs
midr vs surveycore
A side-by-side editorial comparison of midr and surveycore — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
midr vs surveycore: at a glance
What is midr?
A black-box interpreter reaches CRAN, then learns multi-class and survival responses
midr explains black-box models by fitting an interpretable surrogate through Maximum Interpretation Decomposition — main effects plus second-order interactions, with exact Shapley values for the surrogate. Two months after its first CRAN release it can take a matrix response, which covers multi-class classification and survival models, and hold collections of fitted interpretations in midlist and midrib objects for comparison.
What is surveycore?
surveycore declared its API stable with every survey design type covered.
surveycore is the estimation engine of a two-package survey stack, handling design objects and variance estimation while surveytidy supplies the dplyr verbs on top. The June release marks it 1.0.0 and states the API is complete and stable across Taylor series linearization, replicate weights, two-phase and non-probability designs, with means, totals, frequencies, quantiles, ratios, correlations, regression, t-tests, ANOVA and effective sample size all in place.
midr vs surveycore: editorial side-by-side
midr
0.0INFRA · APIS
A black-box interpreter reaches CRAN, then learns multi-class and survival responses
◆ Current state
midr explains black-box models by fitting an interpretable surrogate through Maximum Interpretation Decomposition — main effects plus second-order interactions, with exact Shapley values for the surrogate. Two months after its first CRAN release it can take a matrix response, which covers multi-class classification and survival models, and hold collections of fitted interpretations in midlist and midrib objects for comparison.
◆ Where it's heading
The releases move outward along two axes at once: what can be interpreted, and how much of it fits in memory. Version 0.5.3 rebuilt the fitting path to avoid materialising large design matrices and added a save.memory option; 0.6.0 widened the response from a vector to a matrix and added parametric link functions. Class and argument names were shortened in the same release, so the package is still willing to break itself this early.
◆ Prediction
With multiple models now held in one object and visualisation methods for them, comparison across models is the surface most likely to fill out next — the collection classes exist but the notes describe manipulation and plotting rather than any comparison metric.
surveycore
0.0INFRA · APIS
surveycore declared its API stable with every survey design type covered.
◆ Current state
surveycore is the estimation engine of a two-package survey stack, handling design objects and variance estimation while surveytidy supplies the dplyr verbs on top. The June release marks it 1.0.0 and states the API is complete and stable across Taylor series linearization, replicate weights, two-phase and non-probability designs, with means, totals, frequencies, quantiles, ratios, correlations, regression, t-tests, ANOVA and effective sample size all in place.
◆ Where it's heading
The last months before 1.0.0 were spent making the awkward designs behave like the ordinary ones. Non-probability designs gained jackknife replicate schemes and got their bootstrap repweights routed through the replicate-weight variance estimator in survey_glm(), matching every other estimation function. The survey_collection abstraction — several surveys treated as one pseudo-data-frame — was tightened rather than extended: divergent grouping across members now errors instead of stitching a patchwork with bind_rows(), and the missing-variable argument was renamed and given a stored default on the collection itself. A documentation audit before 1.0.0 turned up six dispatch and print bugs and corrections across forty-plus files, which is the kind of thing that surfaces when an API is being frozen rather than extended.
◆ Prediction
A declared-stable API means the next releases should be additive or corrective rather than breaking, and the pre-1.0.0 pattern of breaking renames should stop. The tight version pinning between the two packages means surveytidy releases will keep following surveycore's.
Alternatives to midr and surveycore
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 midr or surveycore.
dscore
The D-score reference implementation rebuilt its measurement foundation on seven countries.
ggfootball
A football-viz package just swapped scraping for an API and broke its own output to do it.
goat
A gene-set enrichment package that outgrew its human-only origins, then went quiet.
rollupTree
The recursive-computation engine under massProps grows the accessors its consumer needed
massProps
A mass-properties rollup spends a year on documentation and follows its sibling's API
See all midr alternatives → · See all surveycore alternatives →
Recent activity from midr and surveycore
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agosurveycoreFirst stable release: all four survey design types complete ⚡
- 3mo agosurveycoreget_effective_n() computes effective sample size
- 3mo agosurveycoreCollections error on divergent grouping; .on_missing renamed
- 4mo agosurveycoreCRAN patch removing surveytidy from the vignette
- 5mo agomidrMatrix responses bring multi-class and survival models in scope ⚡
- 7mo agomidrFirst CRAN release: MID surrogate models for black-box explanation ⚡
- 7mo agomidrMemory-efficient fitting for large design matrices
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between midr and surveycore?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. midr and surveycore 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 midr better than surveycore?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. midr and surveycore 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 midr?
Top midr alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "midr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/midr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to surveycore?
Top surveycore alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "surveycore alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/surveycore for the full list with editorial commentary on each.