mice
mice can finally predict, not just estimate, from multiply imputed data.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of netdiffuseR and standardlastprofile — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Network diffusion analysis returns from a seven-year gap able to track several behaviours at once
netdiffuseR analyses how behaviours spread through networks — exposure, adoption timing, thresholds, and simulation of diffusion processes. Its feed has a hole: four releases from 2024 to 2026 sit directly on top of three from 2016 and 2017, with the intervening versions absent. The current line is being maintained by a widening group of contributors and, at 1.24.0, was explicitly brought back to CRAN.
A German electricity load-profile package added gas and doubled the market it serves.
standardlastprofile implements the BDEW standard load profiles that German utilities use to assign consumption to customers without interval metering. Until June it did electricity only. Version 2.0.0 added the gas side — the SigLinDe synthetic procedure across all 15 BDEW gas profile IDs — and gave electricity a new primary interface, slp_electricity(), with slp_generate() superseded but retained.
netdiffuseR analyses how behaviours spread through networks — exposure, adoption timing, thresholds, and simulation of diffusion processes. Its feed has a hole: four releases from 2024 to 2026 sit directly on top of three from 2016 and 2017, with the intervening versions absent. The current line is being maintained by a widening group of contributors and, at 1.24.0, was explicitly brought back to CRAN.
The recent releases read as institutional rather than exploratory: CI fixes, CRAN-readiness passes, contributed PRs from new names, bundled teaching datasets. The one structural move is 1.23.0, named for multi-adoption, which alongside a refactor of the exposure and rdiffnet internals adds a function for splitting behaviours apart — the package handling several diffusing behaviours where its object model previously carried one.
With CRAN presence restored and a dataset for a teaching game added in the newest release, the near-term direction looks like classroom and workshop use rather than new method surface. Whether multi-adoption gets its own analysis functions, rather than a splitter, is the open question these notes do not answer.
standardlastprofile implements the BDEW standard load profiles that German utilities use to assign consumption to customers without interval metering. Until June it did electricity only. Version 2.0.0 added the gas side — the SigLinDe synthetic procedure across all 15 BDEW gas profile IDs — and gave electricity a new primary interface, slp_electricity(), with slp_generate() superseded but retained.
The package is converting from a dataset wrapper into a calculation library. Electricity profiles are tabulated values the package ships; gas profiles are computed from daily temperatures and a customer value through a coefficient-driven function, and the maintainer exposed the whole ladder — slp_gas() for the profile, slp_gas_kundenwert() to derive the customer value from a reference year, slp_gas_siglinde() for the raw h(theta) demand function so users can supply state-level coefficients, and coefficient and weekday-factor accessors underneath. The same instinct removed the built-in holiday table in favour of computing Easter directly, which lifted the date range cap from 2073 to open-ended. Deprecations are handled carefully throughout: renames keep working with lifecycle warnings, and the one hard break was already a warning since 1.1.0.
slp_gas_siglinde() was exported specifically so users could plug in region-specific coefficients such as Baden-Wurttemberg's, which points at state-level coefficient sets as the next thing to ship rather than leave to callers. The BDEW reference edition is now pinned to an Internet Archive permalink after the last one 404'd, so tracking edition changes is an ongoing maintenance cost.
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 netdiffuseR or standardlastprofile.
mice can finally predict, not just estimate, from multiply imputed data.
A market-microstructure toolkit that keeps adding estimators as the papers land.
A vowel-analysis package trimming dependencies after an email address got it archived.
The R half of the EMU speech database system, fixing what was quietly broken.
A Bayesian model-averaging package spending its 2.0 on memory, not methods.
tidyplots keeps rebuilding its own foundations rather than layering around them.
See all netdiffuseR alternatives → · See all standardlastprofile alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. netdiffuseR and standardlastprofile 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. netdiffuseR and standardlastprofile 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.
Top netdiffuseR alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "netdiffuseR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/netdiffuser for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top standardlastprofile alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "standardlastprofile alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/standardlastprofile for the full list with editorial commentary on each.