nabla: Exact Derivatives via Automatic Differentiation
Automatic differentiation for R functions written with supported scalar arithmetic and mathematical operations. Provides a composable derivative operator D that computes gradients, Hessians, Jacobians, and arbitrary-order derivative tensors at machine precision. D(D(f)) gives Hessians, D(D(D(f))) gives third-order tensors for skewness of maximum likelihood estimators, and so on to higher orders. Supports loops and executed branches composed of supported operations. Uses nested dual numbers without finite difference truncation error; floating-point rounding and conditioning still affect results.
| Version: | 0.7.2 |
| Depends: | R (≥ 4.0.0), methods |
| Imports: | stats |
| Suggests: | testthat (≥ 3.0.0), knitr, rmarkdown |
| Published: | 2026-10-28 |
| DOI: | 10.32614/CRAN.package.nabla |
| Author: | Alexander Towell 
[aut, cre] |
| Maintainer: | Alexander Towell <queelius at gmail.com> |
| BugReports: | https://github.com/queelius/nabla/issues |
| License: | MIT + file LICENSE |
| URL: | https://github.com/queelius/nabla, https://metafunctor.com |
| NeedsCompilation: | no |
| Citation: | nabla citation info |
| Materials: | README, NEWS |
| CRAN checks: | nabla results |
Documentation:
| Reference manual: | nabla.html , nabla.pdf |
| Vignettes: |
Higher-Order Derivatives (source, R code) Introduction to nabla (source, R code) Higher-Order MLE Analysis (source, R code) Gradient and Hessian Computation with nabla (source, R code) Optimizer Integration (source, R code) |
Downloads:
| Package source: | nabla_0.7.2.tar.gz |
| Windows binaries: | r-devel: nabla_0.7.2.zip, r-release: nabla_0.7.2.zip, r-oldrel: nabla_0.7.1.zip |
| macOS binaries: | r-release (arm64): nabla_0.7.2.tgz, r-oldrel (arm64): nabla_0.7.2.tgz, r-release (x86_64): nabla_0.7.2.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): nabla_0.7.2.tgz |
| Old sources: | nabla archive |
Linking:
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