A New and Improved R: Cool Use Cases of R 4.5.0 Upgrades

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva

R makes you money and saves you time. Why not upgrade your R game?

R 4.5 (released April 2025) brings performance, memory, and developer usability enhancements. Cool use cases include faster large data manipulation, enhanced reproducibility via random number generation, and better developer experience through enriched C-level introspection and string handling. It benefits tidyverse-heavy workflows, high-performance simulations, and package development.

Here’s a breakdown of some cool use cases unlocked or improved by R 4.5 and how you can apply them in real-world workflows:

🧠 1. Simulations & ML Models → Better RNG Reproducibility

Upgrade:

• R 4.5 enhances random number generation (RNG) seeding and reproducibility in parallel environments (like future, parallel, foreach).

Use case:

• Try running thousands of Monte Carlo simulations or cross-validations in parallel using {furrr} or {doParallel} with consistent RNG across sessions.

set.seed(42, kind = "L'Ecuyer-CMRG")  # Better for parallel RNG

🚀 2. Big Data Pipelines → Improved Performance