SCAtools

name that the same table also used for the boundary itself. frontier does not

have that problem: the value identifies which fitted frontier the row reports,

and frontier_accuracy beside it is that frontier's accuracy. boundary_type

still says whether the boundary is a ceiling or a floor. The plot legend reads

"Frontier" again, and frontier is no longer listed by sca_legacy_names().

The arguments ceilings and ceiling are unchanged.

Changed: empty_zone_area is kept beside empty_space_area

0.5.0 renamed empty_zone_area to empty_space_area. NSCA 0.4.5, the release

on CRAN, reads the old name from sca_table(), and fails without it. The table

therefore carries empty_zone_area as an exact copy of empty_space_area until

a release of NSCA that reads the new name has replaced 0.4.5; it will then be

removed. New code should read empty_space_area.

NSCA 0.4.5's own test suite passes against this release.

Terminology: Sufficient Condition Analysis

The method is *Sufficient Condition Analysis*. 0.5.0 changed the title, and

this release finishes the job in the places it missed: citation("SCAtools"),

the README and the help page of sca().

Documentation

• Description in DESCRIPTION, the text on the CRAN page, now says directly what the method is, what it is for and how it helps. Where the method comes from, with its authors and references, is on the package help page, ?SCAtools, which is no longer marked internal and so appears in the reference manual. It now covers the method, what it is for, how to use it and how to read the result.
• The README and its Traditional Chinese translation are rewritten around the same four questions, with a worked example on sca_four_configurations, and install from CRAN. Version history now lives only in this file, and help pages no longer recount it.
• Every exported function now has a runnable example. Examples that run a permutation test use 99 permutations on a subsample so that they finish within seconds; sca(), whose point is the default 1000 permutations, is wrapped in \donttest{}. sca_power() had lost the example it had in 0.4.3 when the help pages were regenerated, and has one again.
• Help pages are generated with Markdown enabled. In 0.5.0 code, links and emphasis written in Markdown appeared literally in the rendered help -- backticks and square brackets rather than code and links.
• citation("SCAtools") and the help pages cite the two papers that set out the method: Chan (in press), *From Necessity to Sufficiency and Necessity-and-Sufficiency: Extending Condition Analysis in Degree*, and Chan (in press), *Mean Effects Are Not Sufficiency Effects: How Sufficient Condition Analysis Complements Regression Analysis*, both University of Leeds. sca_four_configurations is the data of the second.
• sca_legacy_names() said that sca_extract() accepts retired names with a warning and that retired arguments still work. Neither has been true since 0.5.0: sca_extract() stops and names the replacement, and boundary, bottleneck.x and bottleneck.y were removed. The page now says so, and lists the 0.5.0 renames as well as those of 0.4.0.
• A stray tests/testthat/Rplots.pdf is no longer shipped.

Upgrading from 0.4.3

Everything that can make a script written for 0.4.3 fail or give a different

number, with the section of 0.5.0 below that explains it.

• empty_zone_area is now empty_space_area. The old name is still present in sca_table() for now, and legacy = TRUE appends it to both tables.
• sca() runs a permutation test by default (test.rep = 1000), so it takes noticeably longer than sca_analysis().
• bottleneck.x and bottleneck.y are removed from sca_analysis(), and boundary from sca_thresholds() and sca_rescale(). Use threshold.x, threshold.y and inequality.
• sca_extract() stops at once on a retired column name. In 0.4.3 such a call warned and then failed anyway, so only the message changes.
• sca_reference() returns one row per condition and reference line, with line, tau and drawn columns.
• sca_thresholds(), sca_test_plot() and sca_output() default to the first frontier actually estimated instead of "ce_fdh".
• Six inputs that were accepted are refused: an unknown frontier technique, a test.p_threshold outside (0, 1), a negative test.rep, a reversed scope, a scope with no width, and the same variable as condition and outcome.
• One outcome may not be given two different theoretical ranges across conditions.
• With missing values, both axes of a condition are now bounded by the same rows, so effect sizes can differ from 0.4.3 on incomplete data. Complete data is unaffected.
• Imports gains quantreg, which NCA already imports.