Last week we released version 0.1.5-4 of the ChainLadder package on CRAN. The R package provides methods which are typically used in insurance claims reserving. If you are new to R or insurance check out my recent talk on Using R in Insurance.
The chain-ladder method which is a popular method in the insurance industry to forecast future claims payments gave the package its name. However, the ChainLadder package has many other reserving methods and models implemented as well, such as the bootstrap model demonstrated below.
I am very grateful to all who provided feedback over the last two weeks and tested the previous versions 0.3.1 and 0.3.2, which were not released on CRAN.
So, what changed since version 0.3.2? Not much, but plot.gvis didn’t open a browser window when options(gvis.plot.tag) were not set to NULL, but the user explicitly called plot.gvis with tag NULL. Thanks to Sebastian Kranz for reporting this bug. Additionally the vignette has been updated and includes an extended section on knitr.
Many thanks to all who participated in the survey about writing R package vignettes. Following my post last Thursday the responses came in quickly in the evening and all day on Friday. Since Saturday the response rate has been decreasing constantly and I think it is time for a summary based on the 56 responses received. Summary - How to write a good vignette Length: Trust yourself, but aim for about 20 pages.
I am currently co-writing the vignette for the ChainLadder package and wonder what I should be focusing on. I have co-written the vignette of the googleVis package in the past and based it purely and what I thought would work. So, this is an experiment to find out, if user feedback will help me to write a better vignette. Let’s see how it develops. I will make the data available once I have at least 10 submission.