NEWS

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topics 0.72

• topicsGrams(): Fixed incorrect normalization of freq_per_user. Values were previously column-normalized (each cell = a document's share of the corpus-wide count for that n-gram), which produced statistically uninterpretable predictors in topicsTest(). Values are now row-normalized (each cell = relative frequency of the n-gram within that document's own token count), which is the correct definition of per-user relative frequency.
• making n-gram overview plot layout symmetrical
• adding parameter to number of prevalent topics plotted in overview plot

topics 0.71

• adding check_matrix_size in topicsModel() with advice on how to avoid matrix size to explode.

topics 0.70 (2026-02-16)

• adding compatability with textTopicsWordCloud().
• updated parameter defaults top_frequent = NULL and ngram_select = "estimate".

Performance & Robustness

• topicsGrams() speed-up: Rebuilt the n-gram and per-document frequency computation using a single sparse-matrix pass with quanteda, replacing the slow per-n-gram regex counting loop (major runtime improvement on medium/large datasets).
• Memory-safe output: freq_per_user now avoids accidental sparse → dense coercion (the “allocating GiB” warning). It supports auto wide/long output, returning long format when wide would be too large.

Harmonization with topicsDtm()

• Aligned settings & reproducibility: topicsGrams() now mirrors topicsDtm() preprocessing controls (e.g., lower, punctuation/numbers removal, removalword, shuffle, seed, threads, optional stemming/lemmatization hook) and returns a saved settings list in the output.

topics 0.65

New Functions

• topicsTutorialData(): New utility function to download and prepare long-text essay data directly from Hugging Face. Supports custom sample_size, min_word_count, max_word_count, and seed.
• topicsPlotOverview(): Introduced a high-level plotting function for structured overviews. Supports side-by-side comparisons (ngrams), 1D layouts, and 2-D 3x3 grids with a central distribution plot.

Improvements to topicsTest()

• Categorical Variable Support: x_variable and y_variable now fully support Factors and Character vectors.
• Intelligent Method Detection: The test_method is now assigned per-variable. The package automatically detects binary data (0/1 or 2-level factors) to apply logistic_regression while using linear_regression for continuous data.
• Baseline Reporting: Logistic regression results now include a logistic_level string in the output list to clarify the Baseline (0) vs. Target (1) mapping.

Enhancements & Aliases

• Function Aliasing: topicsPreds() can now be accessed via descriptive aliases:
  • topicsPredict()
  • topicsAssess()
  • topicsClassify()
• Visual Refinement: Updated default color palettes in topicsPlot() for better aesthetic consistency.

topics 0.60 (2025-07-22)

• ready for CRAN and installation-harmonized with the text-package.

topics 0.54

• topicsGrams() now uses exact word boundary matching for n-grams (e.g., "lack" is matched as a standalone word, excluding partial matches like "black" or "lacking").
• added ability to handle NAs in topicsTest().

topics 0.51

• adding function to plot circles in the scatter legend.
• fixing where non-significant plots were the same.
• improving the structure of the creat_plot help function.
• moving rJava to suggest to enable compatibility with the text-package.

topics 0.40.6

• addting scatter_legend_dots_alpha and scatter_legend_bg_dots_alpha parameters for the topicsPlot() function.
• adding setting for having the dot sizes according to their prevalence.

topics 0.40.5

• Fixing bug when plotting test based on logistic_regression.

topics 0.40.4

• added occurance_rate to topicsGrams()
• added removal_mode, removal_rate_most and removal_rate_least to topicsGrams()
• ngram_window = c(1) now supported by topicsDtm()
• legend added to topicsPlot() with ngrams
• The size in the dot legend will be based on prevalence if scatter_legend_dot_size = "prevalence". And the popouts are not transparent.
• Fix the issues of tick and label of the x-axis in 1-dim dot legend.
• Able to save the pop-out grey topics in the target folder.
• Fix the bugs of rounding in generate_scatter_plot.
• The default value of highlight_topic_words is set to NULL in the topicsPlot() function.

topics 0.40.2

• changed some behaviours in topicsGrams(), including removing top_n and treating n-grams type differently.
• added stopwords function to topicsGrams().
• fixed the pmi calculation.
• fixed the ngrams_max parameter in `topicsPlot()```.

topics 0.40.1

• adding allowed_word_overlap in topicsPlot() for plotting the most prevalence.
• improving help texts
• highlight_topic_words parameter to add different colours for a word list.
• added stopwords removal for topicsGram().
• added ngrams_max functionality to topicsPlot().

topics 0.40

• removing save_dir and load_dir from all function; only topicsPlot() now has the save_dir as an option.
• size of the dots in distributions can be plotted according to prevalence.
• adding p_adjust_method to topicsPlots().

topics 0.30.5

• plots are not added as a list (and not only saved to the folder)
• added scatter_show_axis_values to the topcisPlot().
• adding feature to plot the n_most_prevalent_topics.

topics 0.30.4

• scaling controls with scale instead of manually resulting in slightly different estimates. (but still same p-value and t-values)
• removed ridge regression, t-test and correlation codes since they did not work
• removed automatic removal of NAs in the topics predictions (this should be handled explicitly).
• topicsTest() default to linear_regression if not the variable only contains 0s and 1s; i.e., now different tests can be applied to different axes.

topics 0.30.3

• saving settings in dtm for downstream use in other functions.
• adding parameters in the topicsPred() function including num_iteration, sampling_interval, burn_in.
• implemented create_new_dtm for creating a new dtm for new data
• adding test for using topics dimension for training using textTrainRegression().
• removing forcing user to set save_dir on most functions (only need to do it for topics functions).

topics 0.30.2

• fixing coherence bug
• showing prevalence and coherence for in results
• restructuring the files

topics 0.30.0

• Harmonizing parameters in topicsTest() incl. x_variable, y_variable and controls
• fixing error that variable names cannot be names with 1 underscore.

topics 0.22.1

• added pmi_threshold (experimental) to topicsDtm()
• removed the saving of raw data and the split procedure in the topicsDtm()
• adding function that name emphasized topics so the file name starts with 0_.
• add a parameter to turn off the shuffling of the data in topicsDtm()

topics 0.22

• change p_threshold to p_alpha
• moved p_alpha from the topicsTest() function to the topicsPlots() function
• removed unnecessary list items from topicsTest()

topics 0.21

• Changes related to compatability with the text-package

topics 0.20

• Cleaning up code and ensuring improved compatibility across platforms.
• Started the journey of improving documentation.

topics 0.10.1

Change

• Removing dim and grid_plot arguments in topicsPlot().
• Fixing the color bugs.
• Adding possibility for the user to use gradient colors in all plots.
• Adding a stop warning when the variable name contains an underscore in topicsTest().