Changes in version 1.0.0 (2026-10-24)                  

Initial release of the companion R package for Barry C. Edwards and
Philip H. Pollock III, An R Companion to Political Analysis, Fourth
Edition.

Datasets

  - Added six classroom-ready datasets used throughout the fourth
    edition: anes, gss, states, world, debate, and students.
  - Replaced the earlier nes teaching dataset with a curated subset of
    the 2024 American National Election Study, including documented
    recoded variables for textbook examples.
  - Updated the General Social Survey, state, and world datasets with
    current observations and expanded political, social, demographic,
    and economic measures.
  - Established maintained metadata sources that generate package data
    objects, variable documentation, and corresponding textbook appendix
    material.

Functions

  - Updated the package's teaching-oriented functions for descriptive
    statistics, data transformation, graphics, confidence intervals,
    hypothesis tests, comparisons, cross-tabulation, correlation, and
    regression.
  - Improved support for optional sampling weights, data arguments,
    missing values, input validation, and consistent table and plot
    behavior.
  - Added documented, reusable return values to the principal analysis
    functions. Regression functions retain standard model behavior,
    while auxiliary result tables are available through stable names.
  - Improved handling of ordered factors and numeric-looking factor
    labels so that calculations use the displayed values where
    appropriate rather than internal factor codes.
  - Expanded getC() support for common statistical and delimited data
    formats, compressed files, URLs, and native R files containing one
    or more objects.
  - Redesigned helpC() to provide interactive access to function help,
    examples, datasets, variable metadata, plotting references, package
    settings, and chapter resources through R's configured help system.
  - Preserved familiar fourth-edition classroom workflows while
    improving error messages, P-value formatting, graphics-state
    restoration, and cross-platform plotting behavior.

Documentation and Testing

  - Revised function documentation, argument descriptions, return-value
    details, and examples to agree with current behavior and use the
    fourth-edition datasets, including anes in place of nes.
  - Updated textbook and online-resource references for the fourth
    edition.
  - Added automated tests for core analysis paths, weighted and
    unweighted results, return structures, importing, interactive help,
    plotting behavior, dataset construction, and regression fixes.
  - Added a separate checking harness for R code examples used in the
    textbook so package behavior and book instruction can be reviewed
    together.