R Weekly 2025-W15 Positron, Tidyverse + AI, Observable

07 Apr 2025

• How to have (my) content shared by R Weekly?

This week’s release was curated by Jonathan Carroll, with help from the RWeekly team members and contributors.

Highlight

• Positron: current joys and pains

• Learning the tidyverse with the help of AI tools

• Observable for R users

Insights

• R, DuckDB, and Me
• Converting arbitrarily large CSVs to Parquet with R
• data.table Count Rows by Group
• R Graphical User Interface Comparison
• Should I Use Your R Package?
• Learning the tidyverse with the help of AI tools
• Observable for R users

• Positron: current joys and pains
• 3MW (Automatic Time Series Collection With {pins} & GH Actions)
• Population pyramid plots with base R
• Running aggregate on wide matrices takes loooong; use nested apply or data tables instead !
• Nonlinear conformalized Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) with R package ‘rvfl’ (and other models)
• Bayesian proportional hazards model for a stepped-wedge design

Resources

• The Complete Guide to While Loops in R

New Packages

📦 Keep up to date wtih CRANberries 📦

CRAN

• {friendlynumber} 1.0.0: Translate Numbers into Number Words
• {SecretsProvider} 1.0.0: Save and Retrieve Name-Value Pairs to and from a File
• {RKaggle} 0.1.0: ‘Kaggle’ Dataset Downloader ‘API’
• {emend} 0.1.0: Cleaning Text Data with an AI Assistant
• {LikertEZ} 0.1.0: Easy Analysis and Visualization of Likert Scale Data
• {sixtyfour} 0.2.0: Humane Interface to Amazon Web Services
• {brokenstick} 2.6.0: Broken Stick Model for Irregular Longitudinal Data

GitHub or Bitbucket

• RObservations #51: Download Kaggle Datasets into the R Console with {RKaggle}

Updated Packages

🔍 Search on R-universe 🔍

• nanotime 0.3.12 on CRAN: Maintenance
• Rblpapi 0.3.15 on CRAN: Several Refinements
• RProtoBuf 0.4.24 on CRAN: Minor Polish
• RcppSpdlog 0.0.21 on CRAN: New Upstream
• RcppZiggurat 0.1.8 on CRAN: Build Refinements
• rsample 1.3.0

• {gemini.R} 0.11.0: Interface for ‘Google Gemini’ API

• What’s New in Rhino 1.11.0: Devmode, Auto Tests, and a New Destructure Operator
• {duckdbfs} 0.1.0: High Performance Remote File System, Database and ‘Geospatial’ Access Using ‘duckdb’ - diffify
• {plotthis} 0.6.0: High-Level Plotting Built Upon ‘ggplot2’ and Other Plotting Packages - diffify
• {sommer} 4.4.1: Solving Mixed Model Equations in R - diffify
• {rJavaEnv} 0.3.0: ‘Java’ Environments for R Projects - diffify
• {mgcv} 1.9-3: Mixed GAM Computation Vehicle with Automatic Smoothness Estimation - diffify
• {lucid} 1.9: Printing Floating Point Numbers in a Human-Friendly Format - diffify
• {r4ds.tutorials} 0.3.1: Tutorials for “R for Data Science” - diffify
• {lazyWeave} 3.0.3: LaTeX Wrappers for R Users - diffify
• {revealjs} 0.10.0: R Markdown Format for ‘reveal.js’ Presentations - diffify
• {toastui} 0.4.0: Interactive Tables, Calendars and Charts for the Web - diffify
• {GitStats} 2.3.0: Standardized Git Repository Data - diffify
• {blastula} 0.3.6: Easily Send HTML Email Messages - diffify
• {PROJ} 0.6.0: Generic Coordinate System Transformations Using ‘PROJ’ - diffify
• {xfun} 0.52: Supporting Functions for Packages Maintained by ‘Yihui Xie’ - diffify
• {dndR} 3.0.0: Dungeons & Dragons Functions for Players and Dungeon Masters - diffify
• {lattice} 0.22-7: Trellis Graphics for R - diffify
• {nanotime} 0.3.12: Nanosecond-Resolution Time Support for R - diffify
• {doRNG} 1.8.6.2: Generic Reproducible Parallel Backend for ‘foreach’ Loops - diffify
• {mongolite} 4.0.0: Fast and Simple ‘MongoDB’ Client for R - diffify
• {jobqueue} 1.6.0: Run Interruptible Code Asynchronously - diffify
• {tuber} 1.0.1: Client for the YouTube API - diffify
• {texor} 1.5.6: Converting ‘LaTeX’ ‘R Journal’ Articles into ‘RJ-web-articles’ - diffify
• {rskey} 0.4.19: Create Custom ‘Rstudio’ Keyboard Shortcuts - diffify
• {papeR} 1.0-6: A Toolbox for Writing Pretty Papers and Reports - diffify
• {diffr} 0.3.0: Display Differences Between Two Files using Codediff Library - diffify
• {RMySQL} 0.11.1: Database Interface and ‘MySQL’ Driver for R - diffify

Videos and Podcasts

• Listen to the R-Weekly Highlights Podcast

Shiny Apps

• {polaroid} 0.2.1: Create Hex Stickers with ‘shiny’

R Project Updates

Updates from R Core:

Updates from the R Contribution Working Group (RCWG):

• R Dev Day @ RSECon25: Warwick University, Coventry, UK, Friday 12 September. Collaborate on contributions to the code, documentation and translations in base R. Free to attend, travel funding available from UK, Europe & Global South, apply by Tuesday 23 April.

Call for Participation

Upcoming Events in 3 Months

Events in 3 Months:

• A list of R conferences and meetings

• This week’s local R-User and applied stats events

• Weekly R Workshops for Ukraine

• Smart Extraction: Converting PDF Tables into Usable Data with R workshop

• A Quick Guide to Getting the Most Out of ShinyConf 2025

Connect

Join the Data Science Learning Community

Quotes of the Week

Post by @[email protected]

View on Mastodon

Post by @[email protected]

View on Mastodon