About me

Gavin M. Klorfine

I’m a graduate student in the Quantitative Methods program at York University, Toronto, Canada. My research thus far has focused on R package development, the (mis)use of statistical methods, and reproducibility. I am also interested in statistical programming more broadly, with a focus on R and Python. When I’m not in the lab, I am usually playing guitar or spending time with my dog, Ringo.

Highlights of my work

  • 📦 Second author of Professor Michael Friendly’s R package vcdExtra.
    • Built the beginnings of a ‘tidy’ framework for working with categorical data in R.
    • My package vignette describing this work may be found here.
  • 📦 Second author of R package ggmosaic2.
    • Worked with Professor Friendly to bring mosaic plots back to CRAN within the ‘ggplot2’ framework following the removal of the legacy package, ‘ggmosaic’.
    • Developed and assisted with substantial improvements and additions, including residual-based shading, proper faceting and spacing, along with a more intuitive API to allow non-aesthetic parameters to be shared between ‘ggplot2’ layers.
    • My package vignette describing this work may be found here.
  • 🏆 First prize (Bachelor’s) oral presentation at the Canadian Statistics Student Conference run by the Statistical Society of Canada.
    • My presentation was on the work I did for my undergraduate thesis, which was an investigation into the validity of methods to detect questionable research practices (e.g., p-hacking) in large sets of results.
  • 📖 Reviewing and editing Professor Friendly’s in-progress textbook Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R.

  • 🐍 Led the creation of an introductory workshop for data analysis in Python.
    • This was delivered through the Quantitative Methods Workshop Series run by the Department of Psychology and Statistical Consulting Service at York University.
    • To be delivered again in November, 2026.

Contact