R Observatory: Metrics for distributions3 version 0.3.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

distributions3

0.3.0Package record

Probability Distributions as S3 Objects

2packages dependsuggested by 4

56.6Kdownloads / year

86.9%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Achim ZeileisCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

Tools to create and manipulate probability distributions using S3. Generics pdf(), cdf(), quantile(), and random() provide replacements for base R's d/p/q/r style functions. Functions and arguments have been named carefully to minimize confusion for students in intro stats courses. The documentation for each distribution contains detailed mathematical notes.

Changes in 0.3.0

New Empirical() distribution based on a random sample. This is particularly useful when forecasts are represented by samples rather than by parametric distributions (#98 and #120 by Reto Stauffer).
New SinhArcsinh() distribution implementing the Sinh-Arcsinh distribution from Jones and Pewsey (2009, Biometrika) (#128 by Reto Stauffer).
Fallback methods for all standard distributions3 methods such as cdf(), pdf(), quantile(), random(), and moments such as mean(), variance(), skewness(), and kurtosis(). These leverage those methods that are available but fill the gaps using numerical integration/differentiation (#120 by Reto Stauffer).
New generic functions score() and hessian() to compute the score (first derivative of the log-likelihood with respect to the parameters) and Hessian (corresponding second derivative). There are numeric fallback methods for general distribution objects and analytic methods for a few distributions. The hessian() methods should typically have an argument expected which allows to select whether the observed (expected = FALSE) or expected (expected = TRUE) Hessian should be computed. Some methods may only support one or the other specification and throw an error message otherwise (#124 and #128 by Reto Stauffer and Achim Zeileis).

Show all changes in 0.3.0Hide the rest of the changes in 0.3.0

All distribution constructor functions such as Poisson() and Binomial() now have default arguments for all distribution parameters. Typically, these new defaults are empty so that for example Poisson() yields a Poisson distribution of length zero. Only those distributions which already previously had a default such as Normal(mu = 0, sigma = 1) yield a distribution of length one (#26 and #129 by Reto Stauffer).
Methods for crps() function from the scoringRules package for computing the (continuous) ranked probabiity score of a distribution. This is a useful proper scoring rule as an alternative to the log-likelihood. A numerical fallback method is provided as well (#88 and #120 by Reto Stauffer and Achim Zeileis).
Streamline the apply_dpqr() workhorse function to avoid unnecessary computations more carefully (#123 and #125 by Achim Zeileis).
Reduce the hard dependencies: ggplot2 is now a "Suggests" dependency and the usage of glue is replaced by base R function sprintf() (#126 and #125 by Achim Zeileis).
Avoid using rlang::check_dots_used() multiple times when calling a single method. For generic functions from distributions3, such as cdf() and variance() etc., the call to rlang::check_dots_used() is directly in the generic. For generic functions defined elsewhere, namely quantile() and mean() from base R and crps() from scoringRules, all methods call rlang::check_dots_used() themselves (#127 by Reto Stauffer).

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("distributions3", 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("zeileis/distributions3")

Development version from zeileis/distributions3. 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-distributions3

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

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-distributions3

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-distributions3

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 7.1 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-18
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-16
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.3.0

READMEYes · 354 wordsVignettesYes · 10 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.3.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 262 (4 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%209 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 98%
Documented parameters: 94%
Return-value docs: 80%
Help pages citing references: 1%

Vignettes (10)

Intro to hypothesis testing HTML
One sample sign tests HTML
One sample T-tests HTML
One sample Z-tests HTML
One sample Z-tests for a proportion HTML
one-sample-t-confidence-interval HTML
Paired tests HTML
The Poisson distribution: From basic probability theory to regression models HTML
Two sample Z-tests HTML
Z confidence interval for a mean HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

56.6K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #1,832 · ~155/day · ~4.7K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

3.5K30 days

10.9K90 days

56.6K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on618 r2u5 autocran1.6K conda_forge83 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

zeileis/distributions3 ↗Account: zeileis

107Stars

17Forks

12Open issues

1Open PRs

7Releases

384Commits

17Commit identities

384 commits · Last activity 2026-10-16 · Default branch at 0.3.0.99, ahead of CRAN 0.3.0 (checked 2026-10-18)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 88%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 399
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 1

Stars over time

2025-08-31 · 1042026-07-22 · 107

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

11 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 7 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/zeileis/distributions3 on 2026-10-18.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

Governance and community (2)

Code of conductContributing guide

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-10-16 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-08-26

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 3 practices

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

Makefile

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

13 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing distributions3 adds 1 package (1 with compiled code, 766 KB of source tarballs). Heaviest: rlang 766 KB.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.0.2

Imports (1)

rlang

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (12)

cowplot crch ggplot2 knitr numDeriv PoissonBinomial revdbayes rmarkdown scoringRules testthat tibble vctrs

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

2direct

3indirect

Depends 1 · Imports 1

Suggested by 4

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

bamlss imaginator

Suggests, most downloaded first

betareg gamlss.dist gamlss crch

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (10)

Achim Zeileis

Author, Maintainer since 0.2.4 (2026) · added in 0.2.0

Alex Hayes

Author

Daniel Jordan

Author

Moritz N. Lang

Author · added in 0.2.0

Ralph Moller-Trane

Author

Paul Northrop

Author · added in 0.1.2

Reto Stauffer

Author · added in 0.3.0

Alessandro Gasparini

Contributor · added in 0.1.2

Emil Hvitfeldt

Contributor

Bruna Wundervald

Contributor

Previously maintained by Alex Hayes (0.1.1 to 0.2.3).

Listed in earlier versions (1)

Lang

no longer listed · 0.2.4 to 0.3.0

Releases (8)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

0.3.0Latest
record
2026-07-22 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 15 exports
Empirical, SinhArcsinh, crps.distribution, dempirical, distribution_calculate_moments, dsinharcsinh, hessian, pempirical, psinharcsinh, qempirical, qsinharcsinh, random.distribution, rempirical, rsinharcsinh, score
0.2.4
record
2026-07-22 · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.2.3
record
2025-09-12 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
0.2.2
record
2024-09-16 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
PoissonBinomial, simulate.default
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
0.2.1
record
2022-09-07 · diff ↗ ·
added 22 exports
HurdleNegativeBinomial, ZINegativeBinomial, ZTNegativeBinomial, ZTPoisson, dhnbinom, dzinbinom, dztnbinom, dztpois, is_continuous, is_discrete, phnbinom, pzinbinom, pztnbinom, pztpois, qhnbinom, qzinbinom, qztnbinom, qztpois, rhnbinom, rzinbinom, rztnbinom, rztpois
0.2.0
record
2022-06-21 · diff ↗ ·
added 15 exports
HurdlePoisson, ZIPoisson, apply_dpqr, dhpois, dzipois, make_positive_integer, make_support, phpois, prodist, pzipois, qhpois, qzipois, rhpois, rzipois, suff_stat
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
0.1.2
record
2022-01-03 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
quantile

added 16 exports
Erlang, Frechet, GEV, GP, GeomAuc, Gumbel, RevWeibull, StatAuc, geom_auc, kurtosis, plot_cdf, plot_pdf, skewness, stat_auc, support, variance
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
0.1.1
record
2019-09-03
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26

Package metadata

First published: 2019-09-03
Total releases: 8 / 7 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.0.2
Bundled data: 1.8 KB / 1 file
Download size: 462 KB

Appears in task views

Probability Distributions

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("distributions3")

Format

Zeileis, A., Gasparini, A., Hayes, A., Hvitfeldt, E., Jordan, D., Lang, M. N., Moller-Trane, R., Northrop, P., Stauffer, R., & Wundervald, B. (2026). distributions3: Probability Distributions as S3 Objects (Version 0.3.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.distributions3

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

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 distributions3 version 0.3.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-22. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-22, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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