Data Science & Entrepreneurship 101 for Pre-Master Students

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The Outlier by Pattern

12 min readJan 29, 2018

A warm welcome to the Mariënburg, the second (and now: first!) home of many students, academics and start-ups. The place where both data science and entrepreneurship is pursued, where classics revived and where the JADS-flag always flies (no not literally, we are not at Zweinstein..) Like your freshmen welcome week it’s a new beginning and another milestone in your life. By choosing for JADS you showed that you are an early adopter, an innovator, a born entrepreneur or perhaps a ‘wantepreneur’. But you’re also a guinea pig, because not only the monastery but also the courses are constantly under development. While there may be many unknowns, remember — no matter what — you are at the forefront of technology and innovation and in pursue of the sexiest job of the 21st century. In no time you can formulate advanced SQL-queries, program in Python and predict the future with Machine Learning. But at this stage, while you still have no clue what you’re getting yourself into, you might desperately look out for a glimpse of what is coming up. With that idea in mind, this ‘handbook’ gathers all the bits and pieces of everything you want — and perhaps don’t want — to know about JADS (A) and the premaster courses (B).

A. Practical

A.1 — Study Books 📚

That is where it all begins, right? Dabble in piles of literature to become the next level data science genius. No, not really to be honest. In fact, in the premaster program the focus is more on gaining practical skills. All the necessary materials will be uploaded on Blackboard and the JADS hub. In other words it won’t cost you a dime, lucky you!

A.2 — TU/e or UvT? 📩

You probably know that JADS is a joint-initative of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Tilburg University (UvT), don’t you? This basically means you have the best of both worlds: you can make use of the student sport centers in Eindhoven and Tilburg, you can follow additional language courses at the UvT while you can buy an affordable notebook through the TU/e, you receive graduate diplomas from both institutions, and the list goes on and on.. So kind of two for the price of one. That sounds great, right? Honestly, it can sometimes be a bit confusing too. Am I supposed to write down my TU/e student number or my UvT one? Which of the two email accounts should I use? More importantly, which email address is read by my professor? Generally speaking, teachers use the email address from their mother university: so if they’re originally part of a research group in Eindhoven they most likely read their @tue.nl email. But be careful to double-check it. I can tell you I’ve got some bad experiences sending assignment files to the wrong one. So it’s up to you: 50% chance. Do you want to take a chance? Is luck on your side? If not, then send your urgent emails to both.

A.3 — Notebook 💻

Due to the continual exponential growth of data and the rise of big data you would almost get the impression that having a supercomputer at your fingertips is a must for anyone in the field of data science. Actually, truth be told, all datasets I have worked with so far were all very small in size (<100 MB) and few computation intensive tasks were needed. But keep in mind that might change throughout the remainder of the program. That’s why it is probably more meaningful to consider current master students’ point of view. For that matter check out this recent Facebook post (update April 23: post has been removed) in which a prospective DS&E student asked whether there is a required notebook configuration in terms of CPU, RAM or Windows version. In summary, a couple of master students mention that any notebook with ≥ 8GB RAM and at least an i5 processor will be more than sufficient for your coursework.

Tip: the TU/e offers the Notebook Reduction Program to (pre)master students which basically means that you get a substantial discount on a relatively high-performance notebook bought in bulk by the university.

A.4 — Student Housing 🏚

As many of the premaster students did their bachelor in Eindhoven, Tilburg or Utrecht, the majority still lives in one of those three cities (20–30 minutes away by train). However, if you moved from abroad it makes sense to find a place in Den Bosch. One option is the Mariënburg itself: Gapph rents apartments on a short-stay basis (<6 months). If you are looking for a permanent residence instead: Camelot Europe offers 1- and 2-person student rooms for a minimal renting period of 6 months. For more details about the rooms, price and location have a look over here.

A.5 — Academic Calendar 🏝

It’s still winter but due to our lovely Dutch weather I would not be surprised if you are already looking out for summer. So in case you’re tempted to score those early bird fly deals to your favorite tropical holiday destination, you may want to have a look at the exam schedule first.

Tip: In the electronic study guide you can find the exact examination dates for each course (Course Code > Examination schedule).

A.6 — Course Exemptions ⚠️

Possibly you are in a home stretch: trying to pass your hardest college course in order to secure your bachelor degree. Or you may even be taking the pre-master on top of all your bachelor coures. In any case, it is good to know that you may be eligible for exemptions for some of the premaster courses. Here is the email I received about it:

Tip: Given that you are only enrolled for the premaster, you may have to pay less tuition (i.e. it’s partially refunded, but you have to be patient..)

Update 30th of January: Important to note that once you decide to follow an optional course it will become part of your exam program. That is to say, you must pass it. Thanks for the tip Nigel!

A.7 — Always Register for the Resit 🔮

Do you know that moment you walk out of the exam room, either feeling relieved and confident or sad and terrified by what just happened in the past 180 minutes? Even though your gut feeling is often right, I would still recommend to register for the resit at all times. After all, it’s not unusual that at the moment of the resit registration deadline you haven’t received your grade for the first attempt yet. So your safest bet is to simply always register for the resit.

The exam took place on the 18th of December and the grades were published the 4th of January 2018, while the closure deadline is on the 21st of December as you can see above. You don’t want to pay the administration fee, do you?

Believe me, you will not be the only one doing that. As a result, expect to be bombarded with de-registration emails 1–2 weeks prior to the resits..

A.8 — You Get Assigned a Seat for Each Exam 😳

Yes, it has already been pre-determined where you have to sit in advance. So, you have to be lucky to sit next to your closest and most brilliant classmates..

A.9 — Being Late During Exams 🕥

Having been 28 minutes late myself — due to folks walking on the railway tracks — I would not necessarily recommend it, but it’s good to know:
you are allowed to enter the exam room until 30 minutes after the examination started. Yep, just in time, like always..

A.10 — Grades are Rounded to the Nearest 0.5 🤔

It’s probably best to illustrate this with a numerical example: if you think an 8.7 becomes a 9 then you are sorely mistaken. It will be rounded downwards to an 8.5. On the other hand, an 8.3 becomes an 8.5 as well.

A.11 — Pass-Fail Criteria ✅

In order to pass a course both your average assignment (!) and written exam grade must be at least 5.0. That is to say, an 8 for you exam cannot compensate a 4 for your assignments. Moreover, the total weighted average grade must be 5.5 or higher.

A.12 — Thursday Afternoon Drinks 🍻

Most Thursdays the Borrelcie (i.e. drinks committee) organises drinks from 17:30 onwards (follow the Facebook group for the exact dates). Stampcards can only be bought with cash, because you know… only by evading taxes we can serve you 8 cold beers for just €5.

A.13 — The Outlier ✍️

Bad luck? No not all, thirteen is an outlier and so are the academics and entrepreneurs showcased on The Outlier. You can read about the story behind JADS, the history of Data Science, the AI World Summit, the differences between an entrepreneurial and scientific career, what the “Stanford for Data Science” is, and much more!

As I (yes, I am also a writer for The Outlier!) wrote earlier, there is something for everyone. So regardless of whether you want to be involved as a writer, editor, interviewer, photographer, designer or promoter get in touch with me or one of the other committee members!

A.14 — Change Password of JADS Hub 🔒

Undoubtedly, your new classmates have your best interests at heart. Still, you might want to consider changing the default password (something like “qwerty”) to something even less original. For a step-by-step tutorial on how to do exactly that see section 3.1 in this guide.

A.15 — iStudent App 📱

Although this mobile app was originally developed for students of Tilburg University, you may benefit from it as a JADS-student too (e.g. to have a quick glance at your schedule). You can find the app on Google Play (Android) and the AppStore (iOS).

A.16 — JADS PowerPoint Template 🖥

A good first impression can work wonders and well begun is half done, so better use a fancy PowerPoint to catch your audience’s attention from the very start. You can find one — in line with JADS’ slick brand identity — over here (both PowerPoint and Keynote).

B. Courses

During your bachelor you might have had the luxury of simply googling for your subject’s course code to stumble upon an abundance of course summaries, notes and exams on for example Stuvia or Studeersnel. As the Data Science & Entrepreneurship program is not even 2 years old you won’t find much there, if anything. Besides, you don’t want to face a paywall, do you? For that reason a shared folder has been put together.

What follows below is a list of tips & tricks for each and every course as well as a description of the corresponding documents in aforementioned folder. At this moment of time some remarks might not ring a bell yet, but they probably do once you revisit them just before your exams.

Update 7th of March 2018: all course related files have been removed upon urgent request of one of the lecturers.

B.1 — Introduction to Data Science (JBP010)

Hopefully you enjoy guest lectures because you’re definitely going to experience a lot of them (>10). It can certainly be interesting, but remember that in the end it is your personal quantified project that counts (70%). Two great tracking applications you might consider installing are “RescueTime” and “Moments” which automatically track your desktop and phone usage respectively (without draining your battery!)

Exam
In the final examination you will be asked 1 out of 55 questions as part of the presentation. You can find the list of questions and answers over here (keep in mind that you may get different ones though).

Course grading statistics (μ=7.6, σ=0.6, pass rate: 100%)

B.2 — Programming (JBP020)

After you learned the basic programming syntax, the first assignment will likely put your conditional statements knowledge to the test. In our case we had to program the famous “Blackjack” card-game (the semester before the assignment was about “Hangman”). At first sight that may sound straightforward, however implementing additional game rules — as prescribed by the assignment — may be more work than you initially think. Further realize that a working solution is not a good solution per se. Put differently, code quality > code quantity. In this folder you’ll find the two assignments from the fall semester, a list of common mistakes in the first assignment and an overview of what you need to know for the exam.

Exam
The final exam is structured as follows: first a part on paper (90 minutes) and after a short break another part on a laptop provided by JADS (90 minutes). For the former we were asked to tell what the output of a certain function or line of code (e.g. len(5*’22')) will be and rewrite some functions in a more elegant or efficient way. After the break, we were asked to read a raw “arff”-file format and perform some data manipulations on it (count number of items, filtering, aggregation, in any case: a lot of list and set comprehensions, make sure you master them!).

Some tips for the exam: use your time wisely in the programming part (you probably run out of time) and be prepared to work on a Windows laptop of which the mouse-pad is incredibly sensitive (i.e. while typing the pointer moves around all the time..; so you may bring your own keyboard with you or borrow one from the IT-department ahead of time)

Course grading statistics based on first attempt (μ=5.9, σ=1.7, pass rate: 64%)

B.3 — Data Structures and Algorithms (JBP030)

I must admit that I haven’t taken this course at JADS myself. Still, I have done my best to gather some bits and pieces here and there. In this folder you’ll find last-semester’s assignments, a practice exam and photos taken during the lectures (all credit thereof goes to Sjoerd, Dijon, Axel, Jan and Vincent 👏).

Tip: If you are looking for some additional practice material (incl. students’ solutions) have a look at this Google Drive folder for the TU/e equivalent of this course (2IL50).

B.4— Introduction to Machine Learning (JBP040) 🎁

Due to unforeseen circumstances our edition of this class was a so-called “Machine Learning Bootcamp” (i.e. 6 intensive days of class). For the spring semester this has likely been changed. In that sense, I expect you are going to have an entirely different experience. Nevertheless, in this folder you find a list of representative exam questions.

Course grading statistics (μ=9.2 — seems like a little present to me and that while ‘Sinterklaas’ was already back in Spain! — , σ=0.5, pass rate: 100%)

B.5 — Foundation of Databases (JBP050)

Especially for this course holds, “practice makes perfect”, since the exam is basically a collection of slightly adapted homework exercises (create an relational model for an arts gallery, groupby exercise from the slides, normalize data to 3NF and of course some SQL exercises including window functions). In fact, some of the SQL-questions are related or even identical to the exercises associated with the president.db (trust me, you can dream that database by the time you take the exam). Further, we were asked about the difference between a trigger and procedure and the meaning of the ACID acronym (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability). In this folder you can find last semester’s assignment and the solutions to the practice material.

⭐️ BONUS — 268 Data Science Resources ⭐️

So let’s face it: you may like your lecturer or you don’t. The good news is that in today’s world more often that not you can choose from dozens if not hundreds of instructors who teach the equivalent online. This especially holds for hands-on tutorials about Python, pandas, scikitlearn and SQL. The challenge, however, is in separating the wheat from the chaff. You can find a curated list of programming, data visualization, machine learning, statistics and database tutorials I found helpful and would recommend over HERE.

Hopefully I made your life just a little bit easier. Happy learning!

Any questions, additions or suggestions for improvement?
Please let me know in the comments down below 👇