R Observatory: Metrics for brokenstick version 2.7.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

brokenstick

2.7.0

Broken Stick Model for Irregular Longitudinal Data

0packages depend

6.3Kdownloads / year

51.4%test coverage

13/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Stef van BuurenFirst published 2026-03-138 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Data on multiple individuals through time are often sampled at times that differ between persons. Irregular observation times can severely complicate the statistical analysis of the data. The broken stick model approximates each subject’s trajectory by one or more connected line segments. The times at which segments connect (breakpoints) are identical for all subjects and under control of the user. A well-fitting broken stick model effectively transforms individual measurements made at irregular times into regular trajectories with common observation times. Specification of the model requires three variables: time, measurement and subject. The model is a special case of the linear mixed model, with time as a linear B-spline and subject as the grouping factor. The main assumptions are: subjects are exchangeable, trajectories between consecutive breakpoints are straight, random effects follow a multivariate normal distribution, and unobserved data are missing at random. The package contains functions for fitting the broken stick model to data, for predicting curves in new data and for plotting broken stick estimates. The package supports two optimization methods, and includes options to structure the variance-covariance matrix of the random effects. The analyst may use the software to smooth growth curves by a series of connected straight lines, to align irregularly observed curves to a common time grid, to create synthetic curves at a user-specified set of breakpoints, to estimate the time-to-time correlation matrix and to predict future observations. See doi:10.18637/jss.v106.i07 for additional documentation on background, methodology and applications.

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("brokenstick", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("growthcharts/brokenstick")

Development version from growthcharts/brokenstick. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-brokenstick

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-brokenstick

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-brokenstick

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

Slowest check: 7.4 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.15

51.4%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

9

Dependencies · direct

Check history

OK2026-08-05
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-08-01
12 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-05-12
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
WARNING2026-05-11
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 1 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-03-14
6 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMEYes · 779 wordsVignettesYes · dynamicpkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 71%
Documented parameters: 95%
Return-value docs: 100%
References docs: 16%

Downloads

6.3K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #5,175 · ~17/day · ~524/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

28530 days

1.5K90 days

6.3K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on187 r2u51 autocran12 c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ growthcharts/brokenstick

9Stars

3Forks

1Open issues

0Open PRs

10Releases

599Commits

1Contributors

linear-mixed-modelslongitudinal-datab-splinegrowth-curves

599 commits · Last activity 2026-03-13

Stars over time

2024-11-17 · 82026-07-07 · 9

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

6 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 6 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/growthcharts/brokenstick on 2026-08-16.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

data-raw/

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Docs source (1)

README.Rmd

Show all practices

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

Git structural (1)

.gitattributes

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

17 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (1)

R >= 3.5.0

Imports (9)

coda dplyr lme4 matrixsamplingmethodsrlangsplinesstatstidyr

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (15)

AGD bookdown ggplot2grDevicesgridExtra knitrlatticeMASSMatrixmice mvtnorm plyr svglite testthat rmarkdown

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (1)

Maintainer (1)

Stef van Buuren

Author, Maintainer

Authors (1)

Stef van Buuren

Author, Maintainer

Package Timeline

8 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
2.7.0Latest
2026-03-13 · current release · diff ↗
unarchivedReturned to CRAN
2026-03-13
archivedRemoved from CRAN
2026-03-02
issues were not corrected despite reminders
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
2.6.0
2025-03-31 · diff ↗
unarchivedReturned to CRAN
2025-03-31
archivedRemoved from CRAN
2025-03-21
the 'maintainer' is deleting notifications unread
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
2.5.0
2023-03-22 · diff ↗
2.4.0
2022-10-30 · diff ↗
2.3.0
2022-09-07 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
2.1.0
2022-03-30 · diff ↗
2.0.0
2021-11-11 · diff ↗

Show 3 earlier events

R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
1.1.0
2020-11-02
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24

Package metadata

First published: 2026-03-13
Total releases: 8 / 1 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.5.0
Bundled data: 462 KB / 4 files
Download size: 1.1 MB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Appears in task views

Missing Data

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("brokenstick")

Format

van Buuren, S. (2026). brokenstick: Broken Stick Model for Irregular Longitudinal Data (Version 2.7.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.brokenstick

This is what citation() produces when a package has no citation file of its own. If it prints something else, use that.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for brokenstick version 2.7.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-08-18. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-08-18, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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