Taking the Plunge into 0’s & 1's
My name is Kerry Benjamin and this year I’ll be learning data science. I’m certain by now you’ve heard of all manner of things like big data, sexiest 21st century job, Hadoop, etc. I have too. Can’t say all the talk hasn’t piqued my interest and so I’m giving it a go.
Why I’m Learning
Data is virtually everywhere. So much of it is being produced by the minute and the insights that can be garnered from it are quite impressive. With initiatives like data.ny.gov, the open data movement, and websites making their data freely available it’s up for the taking if you have the skills and the tools. So over the course of the next year I plan to have all I need to clean, analyze, and take action. I’ve always wanted to help people through tech and I think this is the way to do it.
Skill Break Down
So data science is pretty broad and much of it intersects between a key few other fields. There are also a ton of roles in it besides data scientist. DataCamp did a pretty good goal breaking them down in their spiffy infographic . As for the skills, I’ve broken down what I think is most important for me into these points:
- Statistics
- Mathematics
- Programming Skills
- Data Skills(Modeling, Visualization, Exploration etc)
- Machine Learning
These are the core of what I’ll be focusing on learning. If anything else is needed or important I’ll add it along the way. The first point for me will be on programming. I’m choosing to learn R with DataCamp’s introductory tutorial.
I’m planning on noting my journey at least once a week. I want to provide summaries or gist of what I learned, projects that I work on, insights, etc. I’m hoping if you’re interested in data science too you’ll learn something from my bumbling around. If you’re experienced in the field please be free to provide tips or suggestions. Let’s make this a series everyone benefits from. Wish me luck as I take a dive!
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