Every Wednesday, I will be hosting a Data Analysis Cafe in the Seascape Ecology lab for staff and students at NSU's Oceanographic Centre.
What is the Data Analysis Cafe?
The Data Analysis Café is a place where you can come to chat about all things related to data collection, exploration, and analysis in an informal, collaborative setting with students and staff, including:
- How to plot your data in R and what to look for
- How to collect, analyse and interpret data for your thesis
- Learning about modern analysis methods (from simple statistics to machine learning)
- Get practical advice on how to deal with the common problems we encounter in ecological data analysis
- How to deal with non-independent data (e.g., spatial data, time series, or longitudinal studies)
- How to build and run different types of univariate and multivariate models
- How to validate your models once they're built
- How to deal with peer-review comments regarding your data analysis
What's the Format?
I really want this to be a useful meeting for people, so the format will be strongly group-led, with the weekly topics being determined on a week-to-week basis depending on the needs of the group. Saying that, the general framework will usually involve focusing on an example dataset or analysis each week (e.g., from a student thesis or paper), where a student can introduce us to their study, and get advice on a particular analytical problem they're facing, or to demonstrate a particular technique that they've used, followed by a group discussion. Since many of the problems encountered with ecological data analyses follow similar themes, these longer discussions are intended to give insight into how we can apply analytical tools to all kinds of "real-world" data (e.g., issues with temporal and spatial dependency, small sample sizes, "noisy" data etc), and will be kept relevant to a general audience regardless of the specific study topic.
We will also try to keep a little time set aside each week for an "R Clinic", where you can raise any quick issues you might be having with your code.
Oh, and there will usually be cake.
When & Where?
The Seascape Ecology Lab (509), Wednesdays from 4 – 5 pm
How can I stay up to date with planned meetings?
Information on the weekly meetings will be emailed to students each week, and there will usually be a printed flier in the L2 Cafe (OC building). Alternatively, if you have an NSU email address, you can sign up to join the Seascape Ecology Lab Slack Channel, where you'll automatically have access to the Data Analysis Cafe chat feed.
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