The Single Course That Fast-Tracked My Data Science Learning JourneyThat boosted my understanding, skills and confidence tremendously when I first started out in data scienceAdmond LeeBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingMar 24Before digging into the awesome resources I know and trust, an important disclosure:Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission.
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Please understand that I have experience with all of these courses, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something.
Please do not spend any money on these courses unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.
Alright, now we have the full disclosure.
Let’s dive straight in.
I’ve been receiving messages on a daily basis from aspiring data scientists from different background, asking me what online courses to choose for beginners in data science.
In my article — How To Go Into Data Science?, I shared my approach to choose the right bootcamps and online courses when there are plenty of them out there.
In particular, I mentioned some of the courses that I personally took and they were very useful to me when I first started out in data science.
Online courses and certifications alone are definitely not enough to become a data scientist.
Online courses are structured and are meant to help you learn particular topics of your interest just enough to get started.
Certifications are meant to show what you’ve learnt, not what you’re proficient in.
Among the courses mentioned, there’s one single course that has boosted my understanding, skills, and confidence tremendously when I first started out in data science.
Chances are you may that the course is Machine Learning course taught by Andrew Ng (Sorry to disappoint you!).
The course is Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp taught by Jose Portilla who has deep experience in teaching data science.
Python for Data Science and Machine Learning BootcampI remember when I first started out, I was just like another aspiring data scientist searching for an online course just to get my hands dirty and improve my understanding of data analysis, visualization and machine learning using Python.
To be honest, back then I just had some programming experience with Python and knew nothing about machine learning, let alone the knowledge of deep learning.
But one thing for sure, I was hungry for knowledge and wanted to learn from someone who had deep experience and was already at the stage where I aspired to achieve.
So this course — Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp came highly recommended and appear as one of the top rated courses.
I was skeptical at first, thinking that I’d fall into the trap of the fancy and catchy title, again.
So I did a lot of research by checking its reviews and comparing with other online learning platforms.
And guess what, it was worth the bucks.
Why This Course But Not Others?(Source)There are reasons why I said this course improved my understanding, skills and confidence tremendously when I first started out in data science.
Just take the Machine Learning course taught by Andrew Ng as an example.
The course is fantastic and commonly known as the bible to learn machine learning.
No doubt about that.
Andrew Ng’s ability to break down complicated concepts into simpler pieces of information for learning, especially for beginners in machine learning, is unparalleled.
But there are two things to take note:The course is taught using Matlab/Octave and this programming language is uncommon for most companies out there (as far as I know).
Besides, it’s not open-source and it’s mainly used in academia and research.
The degree of maths involved could be intimidating at first as the instructor explains the theoretical part before diving into implementation.
After getting stuck with learning without progress for some time, I found that my learning works best if I first gain the high-level understanding of a topic and dive into the implementation part.
Once I’ve gained some skills and understanding on a bigger picture, my confidence would be improved, massively.
I’d gain my momentum and motivation to keep learning.
This is when I’d start going into the mathematical parts to learn the fundamentals of the machine learning models behind.
And this is where the course — Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp came in that fit my needs to gain high-level understanding and implement what I’d learned in jupyter notebook right after each tutorial.
Maths were sufficiently covered to get me started in the right direction.
I’m not saying that learning the theoretical and mathematical parts is not important.
It just comes at the later stage of my learning journey using my learning method.
In summary, the learning approach that works best for me is as below (in order):Gain high-level understanding of a topicOnce I’ve the high-level understanding, I’d start implementing what I’ve learned.
Simply because learning by doing is how I learn the most at the shortest time possibleSince I’ve already seen how this concept can be executed in practice, I’d start learning the theoretical and mathematical parts of the topic.
This would give me even better understanding of how the maths are applied to solve problemsFinal Thoughts(Source)Thank you for reading.
I hope that by sharing my experience on how I got started in data science and the single course that impacted me the most as a beginner would help you in your data science journey in some ways.
If you find the learning approach helpful to you, please let me know in the comment below!As always, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave your feedback below or you can always reach me on LinkedIn.
Till then, see you in the next post!.????About the AuthorAdmond Lee is a Big Data Engineer at work, Data Scientist in action.
He is known as one of the highly sought-after data scientists and consultants in helping start-up founders and various companies tackle their problems through business and data strategy with deep data science and industry expertise.
He has been guiding aspiring data scientists from various background to learn data science skills effectively to ultimately land a job in data science through one-to-one mentorship and career coaching.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, and Facebook or book a call appointment with him here.
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