NEWS

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wru 4.0.0

• predict_race() gains a name_source argument. It selects the dictionaries that supply the name probabilities. The default "mixed" combines the Census and voter-file dictionaries. For a name that both hold, the Census probabilities win, and the voter-file dictionary supplies every other name. "census_only" uses the Census dictionaries alone, and "vf_only" uses the voter-file dictionaries alone. There is no Census middle-name dictionary, so "census_only" raises an error for middle names.
• census.surname is deprecated in favor of name_source, and its default is now NULL. A supplied value still works and raises a warning. TRUE maps to "mixed". FALSE maps to "vf_only".
• Surname probabilities now come from the 2020 Census names files. The wru-data-census_last_c.rds dictionary on the v4.0.0 release replaces the 2010-vintage dictionary used since v2.0.0. A Census first-name dictionary (wru-data-census_first_c.rds) is published for the first time. Predictions move for every name, because the 2020 dictionary holds 156,621 surnames against 162,253 in the 2010 dictionary. Probability mass moves toward the Hispanic and multi-race categories. year selects Census geography only, so year = "2010" combines 2010 geography with 2020 name probabilities.
• A failed name-dictionary download now raises an error. The error names the files that are missing and the release that holds them. The download previously printed a message and let execution continue. The failure then appeared as cannot open the connection from readRDS(), far from its cause. If usable copies are already on disk, a failed download reports the error and continues.
• format_legacy_data() now returns an object predict_race() can consume, and its output changes shape as a result (#175). It is keyed by state and carries state/age/sex/year alongside the county, tract, block_group and block tables, matching get_census_data(). Three defects are fixed: the population counts were labelled with 2010 SF1 names (P005003 and friends) rather than the 2020 redistricting names the 2020 code path reads; the block-group table used a blockGroup id column that no merge looks for; and the tract, block-group and block ids were cut from the wrong end of the GEOID, so no block-level row ever matched a voter file. Wrapping the result in list(ST = ...) is no longer needed.
• A census.data object that carries legacy column names is now recognised by those names rather than by year, so an object built for the 2020 redistricting tables or by an older format_legacy_data() works whichever year is requested (#175).
• model = "fBISG" now respects skip_bad_geos = TRUE: voter rows whose geography is absent from the census data are dropped (with a message) so the model can initialize and sample on a consistent set of rows, instead of erroring with "Some initial race values are NA" (#163).
• Fixed use.counties = TRUE raising `year` must be one of "2020" or "2010", not "3": the county-filtered Census download passed arguments positionally with year omitted, so retry was read as year (#161).
• Provided census.data built with age = TRUE and/or sex = TRUE is now used instead of being silently re-downloaded; the cache check compared the stored flags against FALSE rather than the requested age/sex (#161).
• Surname-only predictions (surname.only = TRUE or names.to.use = "surname") no longer require the first- and middle-name dictionaries to be present; those files are read only when first/middle names are actually used (#160).
• Added a wru_progress option to suppress the Census-download progress bar. Set options(wru_progress = FALSE) to silence the furrr progress bar (which bloats batch/non-interactive log files) while keeping the other progress messages (#150).
• predict_race() gains a return.unmatched argument (default FALSE). When TRUE, it appends boolean last_matched / first_matched / middle_matched columns reporting whether each name was found in the dictionary. The flags use a single dictionary match for every model (BISG, fBISG, eBISG), so they are comparable across models and name selections, and are computed before imputation (#105). Re-implements the feature proposed by @mdblocker in #165, keeping the original argument and column names.
• Fixed unmatched non-hyphenated names being silently matched to the genuine surname "Na" after the name-cleaning cascade coerced their match key to the string "NA". Such names are now correctly treated as unmatched, so impute.missing = FALSE leaves them NA and impute.missing = TRUE imputes them rather than assigning the unrelated "Na" probabilities (#162).

wru 3.1.1

• Updating release for piggyback fix.

wru 3.1.0 (2026-05-07)

• New feature release adding the eBISG model.

wru 3.0.4

• Fixes a bug related to a list of variables not being unnested properly (#151, #153).

wru 3.0.3 (2024-05-24)

• Fixes a bug that pushed NaN into small population tracts (#151).

wru 3.0.2 (2024-04-04)

• Fixes a bug that led to overestimation of black and hispanic populations (#145).

wru 3.0.1 (2024-02-28)

• GitHub has changed their policy on binary formats in releases, need to refer to older version.

wru 3.0.0 (2024-02-16)

• Adding back age and sex functionality. Other improvements.

wru 2.0.0

• Updated defaults to 2020 data, specified as next major version 2.0.

wru 1.0.1 (2022-10-21)

• Bug fixes for census URL and census year.

wru 1.0.0 (2022-06-21)

• Updates to BISG, inclusion of fBISG and other package improvements.

wru 0.1.12

• Some Census API improvements (thanks to Silvia Kim).

wru 0.1.11

• Minor fix requested by CRAN.

wru 0.1.10

• Fixed minor warning message.

wru 0.1.9

• Fixed census_helper.R so that state field can be lower case in user data.

wru 0.1.8

• Updated to be compatible with U.S. Census API updates.

wru 0.1.7

• Added testthat functionality.

wru 0.1.6

• Removed extraneous documentation, renamed 2010 Surname List object, and added place as geography.

wru 0.1.5

• Updated http to https to access U.S. Census API.

wru 0.1.4

• Fixed error in merge_surnames.R and updated relevant documentation.

wru 0.1.3

• Allows Census data download at level user prefers (block, tract, or county).

wru 0.1.2

• Updated surname handling, enhanced demographics option, and improved error handling and documentation.

wru 0.1.1

• New function to pre-download Census data and other minor improvements.

wru 0.0.2

• Minor improvements.

wru 0.0.1

• First version on CRAN.