First post!
You start a blog and then you can’t decide what to write about in your first post. After mulling it over I decided I would write why I want to be a data scientist and show any cool things I’ve seen.
If you don’t want to read all the below just skip to the bottom that summarises everything and a cool example of data science in action.
I first discovered data science accidently while perusing courses on Udemy when I was looking for courses to improve my SQL skills. The course was only a tenner so I thought why not since it had the word ‘data’ involved. I started the course and realised this encompasses almost everything I want in a role whilst not wasting my years of experience an analyst. It involves analysis, programming, statistics and sharing insights with clients/shareholders.
I then started looking for more data science courses and found one on Coursera. If you have never heard of Coursera before, they have online courses taught by Universities and you can get a certificate with a university stamp on there. The course I found was called Data Science Specialisation taught by John Hopkins University. I finished the first module quite quickly as it was based on general data idioms which I had learnt in my job. The second course took a lot longer as I was getting married last summer and did not have the time to finish it in the recommended period. In addition, it was teaching me a new programming language so learning new syntaxes took a while.
Only issue I have with Coursera is, each module has weekly assignments and quizzes you need to do. Now, I don’t have the time to meet these weekly deadlines so I’ve held off finishing off the rest of the specialisation. I am continuing to learn programming though including both Python and R as I don’t want to limit myself. I think both have strengths and weaknesses but my preferred language is R.
If you want to start learning those languages I highly recommend data camp . You don’t need to download any software’s as all the coding is done on their site. The beginner courses are free and you get a shiny certificate you can add to your LinkedIn profile. If you would like to do more of the advanced courses then you will need to subscribe to their site.
Taking some courses I also realised there was a lot more statistics involved than I had in my wheelhouse. I hated statistics at school and university just because I was not good at it. Every other aspect of maths I excelled at but statistics was always my weakness so I avoided it as much as I could (paying for it now aren’t I)
I stopped the data science course and decided to start brushing up on my statistics. I am actually getting good at it and enjoying it more than I thought I would.
Long story short this blog is about me becoming a data scientist and holding myself accountable.
I’ll be a posting my progress on things and any useful things I’ve come across that might help anyone else.
Here’s a cool example I saw on R-Bloggers of data science in action:
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.
Shan
*Disclaimer*
All the links I’ve provided I’ve done of my own accord and no one has paid me to do so.