R Observatory: Metrics for flashlight version 1.0.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

flashlight

1.0.0Package record

Shed Light on Black Box Machine Learning Models

2packages depend

6.4Kdownloads / year

83.9%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Michael MayerCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗

Shed light on black box machine learning models by the help of model performance, variable importance, global surrogate models, ICE profiles, partial dependence (Friedman J. H. (2001) doi:10.1214/aos/1013203451), accumulated local effects (Apley D. W. (2016) doi:10.48550/arXiv.1612.08468), further effects plots, interaction strength, and variable contribution breakdown (Gosiewska and Biecek (2019) doi:10.48550/arXiv.1903.11420). All tools are implemented to work with case weights and allow for stratified analysis. Furthermore, multiple flashlights can be combined and analyzed together.

Changes in 1.0.0

New functionality

plot.light_effects() has gained an argument recode_labels to modify the curve labels.

Bug fixes

More than one "by" variable would raise an error when creating the "flashlight" object, see #62.
Fix compatibility issue with ggplot v 4.0.

Deprecated functionality

add_shap(): Deprecated in favor of {kernelshap} or {fastshap}.
Consequently, type = "shap" in light_profile(), light_importance(), light_scatter(), and light_profile2d() is deprecated as well.
plot_counts() is deprecated.
light_recode() is deprecated.
The option stats = "quartile"of light_effects() and light_profile() is deprecated.
Column names of resulting data objects cannot be set via options() anymore.

Show all changes in 1.0.0Hide the rest of the changes in 1.0.0

Exported -> internal

The following functions are now internal:

grouped_center()
grouped_counts()
grouped_stats()
grouped_weighted_mean()
all_identical()
auto_cut()
common_breaks()
cut3()

Minor changes

most_important() is not S3 anymore.
plot.light_breakdown() and plot.light_importance() do not use flipped coordinates anymore.

Less dependencies

{cowplot} and {withr} packages have been removed from "imports".

Announcements for upcoming version 1.1.0

The argument "stats" in light_effects() and light_profile() will be removed. It has no effect anymore.

Maintenance

Update code coverage version.
Fix NOTES on CRAN results page.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("flashlight", 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("mayer79/flashlight")

Development version from mayer79/flashlight. 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-flashlight

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-flashlight

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-flashlight

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: 3.0 min · r-release-macos-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.0.0

READMEYes · 215 wordsVignettesYes · 1 · dynamicNEWSYes · 67% structured · mentions 1.0.0Citation fileNo

Help pages: 36
Examples that run: 100%24 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 85%
Documented parameters: 96%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 19%

Vignettes (1)

Using flashlight

How these are measured

Downloads

6.4K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #5,116 · ~18/day · ~537/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

75330 days

1.6K90 days

6.4K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on139 r2u3 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

mayer79/flashlight ↗Account: mayer79

25Stars

4Forks

3Open issues

0Open PRs

5Releases

290Commits

2Commit identities

interpretabilityinterpretable-machine-learningmachine-learningrr-packagexai

License file reads as GPL-2.0 · 290 commits · Last activity 2025-10-13 · 0% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 95%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 5
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-05-16 · 232026-07-07 · 25

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

9 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 5 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/mayer79/flashlight on 2026-10-21.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Docs source (2)

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2025-10-13 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting

CRAN release process (3)

cran-comments.mdrevdep/CRAN-SUBMISSION

Show all practicesHide 1 practice

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (2026-10-20)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

11 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing flashlight adds 31 packages (15 with compiled code, 29 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, ggplot2 6.0 MB, isoband 1.5 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.2.0

Imports (11)

dplyr ggplot2 MetricsWeighted rlangrpartrpart.plotstatstibble tidyr tidyselectutils

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (3)

knitr rmarkdown testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

2direct

0indirect

Imports 2

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

vivid mrIML

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Michael Mayer

Releases (15)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.0.0Latest
record
2025-10-13 · current release · diff ↗ ·
removed 7 exports
all_identical, auto_cut, cut3, grouped_center, grouped_counts, grouped_stats, grouped_weighted_mean
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
0.9.0
record
2023-05-10 · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
0.8.0
record
2021-04-21 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
is.light_profile2d, is.light_profile2d_multi, light_profile2d
0.7.5
record
2021-02-13 · diff ↗
0.7.4
record
2021-01-10 · diff ↗
0.7.3
record
2020-06-20 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
midpoints
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
0.7.2
record
2020-04-14 · diff ↗
0.7.1
record
2020-03-20 · diff ↗
0.7.0
record
2020-03-12 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
is.light_global_surrogate, is.light_global_surrogate_multi, light_global_surrogate

Show 7 earlier eventsHide 7 earlier events

0.6.0
record
2020-01-19 · diff ↗ ·
added 5 exports
add_shap, is.light_scatter, is.light_scatter_multi, is.shap, light_scatter
0.5.0
record
2019-12-05 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
grouped_center, grouped_counts, grouped_weighted_mean
0.4.0
record
2019-11-10 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
light_interaction
0.3.0
record
2019-10-13 · diff ↗
0.2.0
record
2019-09-18 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
is.light_breakdown, is.light_breakdown_multi, light_breakdown
0.1.0
record
2019-08-25
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26

Package metadata

First published: 2019-08-25
Total releases: 15 / 7 yrs
License: GPL (>= 2) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.2.0
Download size: 436 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("flashlight")

Format

Mayer, M. (2025). flashlight: Shed Light on Black Box Machine Learning Models (Version 1.0.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.flashlight

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 flashlight version 1.0.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-23. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-23, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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