How to Learn Data science from scratch
Someone asked me recently how he could get the knowledge and the skills necessary to become a Data Scientist. There are different ways to learn data science, go to university, follow a bachelor or master in data science, get into a Bootcamp program, or learn it by yourself. Nowadays a lot of material is available on the internet, often for free, to learn the skills necessary for Data Science.
There are three primary skills needed for Data Science 1) A programming language used in the data ecosystem, typically one of Python/R or Scala 2) SQL, for data manipulation and extraction, and 3) Statistics & Machine Learning.
Python
Assuming this is your first programming language, Python is an excellent language to learn. It is a general-purpose programming language with a broad ecosystem of data libraries. It is also relatively straight forward to learn and is often taught in introductory classes for computer science.
It is good to start with a general introduction to computer science, rather than a more data focus Python course. edX’s Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python provides a decent entry point for getting accustomed to programming principles. Despite having some problem sets to complete, it will be necessary to consolidate the knowledge acquired during practical exercises…
