Dr. Steffi LaZerte

Hi! I’m Steffi LaZerte, an independent biological consultant and R programmer, and part time Community Assistant at rOpenSci.

I provide services in R Package Development, R Workflows (including data management and analysis), and R Instruction. If you are interested in any of these services, please feel free to contact me.

Services

R Package Development

I am the author of several R packages providing a variety of services from accessing historical weather data from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s website (weathercan) to accessing NatureCounts animal observations (naturecounts).

I also help update existing packages, from minor (e.g., rcaaqs) to major (e.g., motus, bbsBayes2, ARUtools) changes.

I take pride in developing R packages that are not only powerful but user-friendly, including informative errors, in-depth tutorials, and instructions. I also prioritize error checking and testing to ensure packages are robust.

R Workflows

I specialize in preparing data workflows for complex data sets used in the fields of environmental monitoring, conservation, ecology, behaviour, evolution, and other natural sciences (e.g., Aquifer Factsheets). I combine these workflows with Quarto reports and websites as needed to ensure an open and reproducible record (e.g., Weather and Mosquitoes, Vulture Migration, Urban Stopovers and Motus tracks.

As a biologist specializing in behavioural ecology I also have the training to consider experimental and statistical protocols, biological relevance and other necessary considerations when preparing data for analysis.

R Workshops

The power of R to manage and visualize data, to create reports, and perform reproducible statistics is immense. However, the learning curve is fairly steep to start out. I aim to help reduce this learning curve by explaining R in ways that make sense to non-programmers. I also help explain workflows and general best-practices. There is so much more to R than simply statistics. I run workshops on Dealing with Data in R, Introduction to Rmarkdown/Quarto for Reproducibility, and an introductory workshop to Figures in R.


Created with Quarto by Steffi LaZerte; Updated 2024-06-17