ShinyStan

ShinyStan provides immediate, informative, customizable visual and
numerical summaries of model parameters and convergence diagnostics for
MCMC simulations. The ShinyStan interface is coded primarily in R using
the Shiny web application framework and is
available via the shinystan R package.

Resources

• mc-stan.org/shinystan (Website with online documentation)
• Ask a question (Stan Forums on Discourse)
• Open an issue (GitHub issues for bug reports, feature requests)

Installation

• Install the latest release from CRAN:

install.packages("shinystan")

• Install the development version from GitHub (requires devtools package):

if (!require("devtools")) {
  install.packages("devtools")
}
devtools::install_github("stan-dev/shinystan", build_vignettes = TRUE)

Demo

After installing run

library("shinystan")
launch_shinystan_demo()

Screenshots

About ShinyStan

Applied Bayesian data analysis is primarily implemented through the MCMC
algorithms offered by various software packages. When analyzing a posterior sample
obtained by one of these algorithms the first step is to check for signs that
the chains have converged to the target distribution and also for signs that
the algorithm might require tuning or might be ill-suited for the given model.
There may also be theoretical problems or practical inefficiencies with the
specification of the model.

ShinyStan provides interactive plots and tables helpful for analyzing a
posterior sample, with particular attention to identifying potential problems
with the performance of the MCMC algorithm or the specification of the model.
ShinyStan is powered by RStudio’s Shiny web application framework and works with
the output of MCMC programs written in any programming language (and has extended
functionality for models fit using RStan
and the No-U-Turn sampler).

Saving and deploying (sharing)

The shinystan package allows you to store the basic components of an entire
project (code, posterior samples, graphs, tables, notes) in a single object.
Users can save many of the plots as ggplot2 objects for further customization
and easy integration in reports or post-processing for publication.

shinystan also provides the deploy_shinystan function,
which lets you easily deploy your own ShinyStan apps online using RStudio’s
ShinyApps service for any of
your models. Each of your apps (each of your models) will have a unique url
and is compatible with Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and most other browsers.

Licensing

The shinystan R package and ShinyStan interface are open source licensed under
the GNU Public License, version 3 (GPLv3).