[R-pkgs] New versions for the distr-family of packages, of startupmsg, and a new package "distrDoc"

[Peter Ruckdeschel]

We would like to announce the availability on CRAN of new versions
of our packages "distr" (1.8), "distrEx" (0.4-4), "distrSim" (1.8), "distrTEst" (1.8),
"startupmsg" (0.4) as well as a new package "distrDoc" (1.8)
[all of them require R >= 2.2.0]
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********************************* Changes ***********************************************
of "distr" (1.8), "distrEx" (0.4-4), "distrSim" (1.8), "distrTEst" (1.8), "startupmsg" (0.4)
*****************************************************************************************
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There are major changes in "distrSim" and "distrTest" from this release on;
the more important ones can be inspected at

        http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/math/org/mathe7/DISTR

and the pages linked to on this page.

After package installation you may also have a look
at NEWS("<pkg-name>") for all the packages mentioned in this mail.

>From this version on, we provide a more detailed manual for the distrXXX family
in form of vignette distributed separately in package "distrDoc" (see below).

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Short Descriptions
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************ "distr":
"distr" is to provide a conceptual treatment of random variables
(r.v.'s) by means of S4--classes. A virtual mother class "Distribution"
is introduced.
All distributions of the "stats" package are implemented as subclasses of
either "AbscontDistribution" or "DiscreteDistribution".

Using these classes, we also provide (default) methods to automatically
generate the image distributions under unary mathematical operations as
well as a general convolution algorithm.
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************ "distrSim":
Classes and methods are provided for a standardized treatment of
simulations (also under contaminations) .
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************ "distrTEst":
Classes and methods are provided for a standardized treatment of
the evaluation of statistical procedures (up to now only estimators)
at data/simulations
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************ "distrEx":
This package provides some extensions to package "distr" like:
* extreme value distribution classes,
* expectations
  +in the form E(X)  for the expectation of X where X is some
    distribution or
  +in the form E(X,f) for the expectation of f(X) where X is
     some distribution and f some function in X,
* further functionals: var, sd, IQR, mad, median
* truncated moments,
* distances between distributions
  (Hellinger, Kolmogorov, total variation, "convex contamination")
* lists of distributions,
* conditional distributions in factorized form
* conditional expectations in factorized form
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************ "distrDoc":
"distrDoc" provides a common vignette to the distrXXX family
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************ "startupmsg":
provides utilities for start-up messages for packages
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We look forward to receiving questions, comments and suggestions

Peter Ruckdeschel
Matthias Kohl
Thomas Stabla
Florian Camphausen