simChef: High-quality data science simulations in R

Abstract

Drawing substantially from the Predictability, Computability, and Stability (PCS) framework (Yu & Kumbier, 2020), simChef emphasizes the scientific best practices encompassed by PCS by removing many of the administrative burdens of simulation design through: (1) an intuitive tidy grammar of data science simulations; (2) powerful abstractions for distributed simulation processing backed by future (Bengtsson, 2021); and (3) automated generation of interactive R Markdown simulation documentation, situating results next to the workflows needed to reproduce them. Taken together, simChef’s capabilities overcome many of the design, computational, and reproducibility hurdles inherent in nearly every data science simulation study.