WhatIf

1.5-11

Software for Evaluating Counterfactuals

0packages depend

1.5Kdownloads / year

47.1%test coverage

12/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Katalina TothFirst published 2026-03-269 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Inferences about counterfactuals are essential for prediction, answering what if questions, and estimating causal effects. However, when the counterfactuals posed are too far from the data at hand, conclusions drawn from well-specified statistical analyses become based largely on speculation hidden in convenient modeling assumptions that few would be willing to defend. Unfortunately, standard statistical approaches assume the veracity of the model rather than revealing the degree of model-dependence, which makes this problem hard to detect. 'WhatIf' offers easy-to-apply methods to evaluate counterfactuals that do not require sensitivity testing over specified classes of models. If an analysis fails the tests offered here, then we know that substantive inferences will be sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence, no matter what method of inference one chooses to use. 'WhatIf' implements the methods for evaluating counterfactuals discussed in Gary King and Langche Zeng, 2006, "The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals," Political Analysis 14 (2) DOI:10.1093/pan/mpj004; and Gary King and Langche Zeng, 2007, "When Can History Be Our Guide? The Pitfalls of Counterfactual Inference," International Studies Quarterly 51 (March) DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2007.00445.x.

Install

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

install.packages("WhatIf", 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("IQSS/WhatIf")

Development version from IQSS/WhatIf. 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-whatif

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

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-WhatIf

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-WhatIf

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

1NOTE12OK

Failing flavors

NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc

Slowest check: 56 s · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.14

47.1%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

Dependencies · direct

Check history

NOTE2026-08-01
12 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-04-25
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-03-27
9 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
ERROR2026-03-26
5 OK · 2 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 1 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMENoVignettesNopkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 100%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
References docs: 100%

Downloads

1.5K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #11,688 · ~4/day · ~123/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

23730 days

86790 days

1.5K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on114 r2u40 c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ iqss/whatif

18Stars

6Forks

4Open issues

0Open PRs

0Releases

60Commits

8Contributors

60 commits · Last activity 2023-05-17

Stars over time

2024-12-06 · 182026-07-07 · 18

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

3 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 2 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/iqss/whatif on 2026-07-31.

Continuous integration (2)

Travis CIAppVeyor

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

3 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (1)

R >= 3.5.0

Imports (3)

lpSolve pbmcapplyparallel

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (1)

testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (7)

Maintainer (1)

Katalina Toth

Maintainer · added in 1.5-11

Authors (5)

Christopher Gandrud

Author · added in 1.5-8

Gary King

Author

Ben Sabath

Author · added in 1.5-9

Heather Stoll

Author

Langche Zeng

Author

Contributors (1)

Soubhik Barari

Contributor · added in 1.5-11

Package Timeline

9 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.5-11Latest
2026-03-26 · current release · diff ↗
unarchivedReturned to CRAN
2026-03-25
archivedRemoved from CRAN
2025-12-22
issues were not corrected despite reminders
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
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
1.5-10
2020-11-14 · diff ↗
unarchivedReturned to CRAN
2020-11-14
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
archivedRemoved from CRAN
2020-03-07
check problems were not corrected despite reminders
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.5-9
2017-07-25 · diff ↗

Show 25 earlier events

R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.5-8
2017-03-21 · diff ↗
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R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
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R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
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R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10
1.5-6
2014-01-08 · diff ↗
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R 3.0.0 released · 2013-04-03
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R 2.15.0 released · 2012-03-30
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R 2.14.0 released · 2011-10-31
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R 2.13.0 released · 2011-04-13
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R 2.12.0 released · 2010-10-15
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R 2.11.0 released · 2010-04-22
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R 2.10.0 released · 2009-10-26
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R 2.9.0 released · 2009-04-17
1.5-5
2009-03-08 · diff ↗
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R 2.8.0 released · 2008-10-20
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R 2.7.0 released · 2008-04-22
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R 2.6.0 released · 2007-10-03
1.5-4
2007-09-24 · diff ↗
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R 2.5.0 released · 2007-04-24
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R 2.4.0 released · 2006-10-03
1.4-6
2006-08-19 · diff ↗
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R 2.3.0 released · 2006-04-24
1.3-4-3
2005-10-31
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R 2.2.0 released · 2005-10-06

Package metadata

First published: 2026-03-26
Total releases: 9 / 1 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.5.0
Bundled data: 8.0 KB / 2 files
Download size: not tracked yet
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

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Causal Inference

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