Kick-Start Your Data Science Career with Zero Investment!!
A Novice guide for starting Data Science with some of the Best Free Resources available on the Internet.
In this story, I have outlined some most useful data science resources, based on my experience and explorations. Before diving into the Resources, let's have an idea about Data Science for those who are don’t have much idea or new to Data Science and on how it is been used and why it is so Interesting Field…
Read the full story to know about other useful resources and tips to improve your Data Science Learning Track!! Enjoy. 😃
Today people from different fields are transitioning into Data Science Domain, people having more than 5 years of experience are willing to enter into this field which implies that it is not limited to Computer Science Graduates. But having a background in Computer Science is an added advantage. It’s not just the pay that lures people to get into Data Science, but also the potential which the data has and how it can unfold answers to many questions and make human-life easier. Some of the major examples include Chatbots (add link) to Recommendation Systems, Self-Driving Car to Healthcare industry.
Talking about how data science can be used in healthcare, Google’s recent news on “Detecting Breast Cancer better than Doctors”(end different). Data Science can also unleash new discovery in different dimensions including Space such as ExoPlanet Hunting using the images captured by telescopes.
There are various path which you can follow to get your hands dirty and create something new like NLP(Natural Language Processing), Speech Processing, Computer Vision (CV), Video Processing, Cognitive Computing, and many more. This article is generalized so that anyone from any domain can start their career in Data Science. I will describe more on how you can get yourself ready (that is, get yourself acquainted with the basics of Data Science) before diving deep into different paths mentioned above.
So let's get started with the main topic. These few resources which are freely available on the internet can help you, Master Data Science, in a couple of months.
1. Cognitive Class by IBM
I personally recommend this, as said “this is from where I started my Data Science Journey”
This website ( cognitiveclass )have many courses that are available for free of cost and after completion, you get certified and badges. You can start with the basics of python if you not familiar with it. It has Tests and Quizzes at the end of every module so you can check how well you understood. You can check your progress as well. It has a different Path which you can follow to build a career or in which you are interested. For example, if you are interested in Big Data Technologies, choose the Big Data Fundamentals.
All thanks to IBM for providing all of these resources for free!! You also get 1200$ free of cost to learn IBM Cloud, if you are interested :)
FYI: You can find almost all the courses here which are there for IBM Professional Data Science Course by Coursera. (with a little change!)
2. Kaggle
This is a platform created for Data Science to learn, share and collaborate, create competitions, etc so that people get benefited. Kaggle is place where you can learn from different notebook and kernels on how people have approached differently to solve the same problem scenarios held via competitions, which can have prizes or sometimes just for knowledge. You can find 10 different solutions to the same problem and what are the things that didn’t go as expected, sometimes someone has just explored the various sides of the data (through different data visualization techniques) you are gonna use for creating the solution for the problem.
3. Udemy
This website a ton of courses created by the developers or freelancers which free and sometimes paid, but really are cost-effective as well. Some of the content which you can follow to learn different libraries used in Data Science are Pandas, Scikit-Learn, etc. by Pierian Data Inc. I personally find their courses to be informative and well-presented with walkthrough code-session in their video’s lecture.
4. Coursera
This website has good quality of courses available and very useful. If you are a student then you can apply for the Scholarship/Financial Aid, you need to briefly describe why it is important for you and how it will help you and then you can submit the application, it will take usually 15 days to get approved after that you can start with the course. Once it gets approved you can start with the course and after completion, you can get your certificate. The courses are well recognized by the industry as well.
5. Medium
As you have reached here because I’m able to share my experiences with you. Many Authors/Professionals working in the industry write about the technologies they are working on and how to implement them with well-demonstrated codes write-up to follow on. Specifically, if you are interested in articles related to a specific topic you can follow various publications on medium so that you can get there feature stories by them. One of the famous publication for data science on Medium is Towards Data Science.
6. Meetup
Meetup - these are events/workshops host by community members, sometimes some companies, or open-source communities related to different topics that they are working on. You can join different groups or communities around you to learn more from them. These meetups have a discrete range of people/technologies, from people who are experts in that domain to the people who have started to explore those topics. You can find groups near you using this website and join them as per your interest. Other meetups websites are Eventbrite, allevents, etc.
7. Internshala
After getting familiar with Data Science, and knowing about the nuts and bolts of the subject, you can start applying your knowledge to real-world problems. Start Exploring the industry need or get an internship using job portal websites like naukri.com, monster.com, indeed.com, internshala.com, etc. Intershala is a good place to start with a new internship and getting experience to some extent. I’m telling you this because it has many startups who are ready to take an individual with no prior experience if you have knowledge on that domain you can easily grab at least one internship. Startups are a good place to extensively learn and apply your knowledge. It now has some Courses to start with if any technologies you don’t know, is mentioned in the JD(Job Description). Explore the various industry requirement along with your interest by going through different job postings and prepare according to that.
These where the few key resources which I feel are must if you are starting your career in Data Science.
Some of the other resources which are really helpful or might interest you to check on:
Tips
- Whenever you start learning new technologies or some key libraries or topic have a Cheatsheet of the same. Cheatsheets are a great way to start learning new topics. To find cheatsheets on Data Science you can refer here.
(P.S. Cheatsheets are a summary of all the key concepts and functions of the topic within a single or couple of pages organized in a presentable manner)
- Read and understand at least one article from the above-mentioned websites like Towards Data Science, Analytics Vidhya, KDnuggets, etc. or try to run all the code examples given on Kaggle or GeeksforGeeks.
- Create Your Github Profile and add some good projects which are already open-sourced by adding some value/analysis to it.
- Create and maintain your LinkedIn Profile to connect with the different people who are already doing a great job in the Data Science domain.
Hope I have guided a way to start your Data Science Journey, but Data Science is not just about developing algorithms or Machine Learning models, you need to have other skills like :
- Domain Knowledge — you need to know the start-to-end knowledge of your business not just a part of the problem you are trying to solve.
- Communication — to communicate your results to your managers and stakeholders.
- Visualization — visuals are a great way to show what you have discovered from the data, how certain decisions will impact the business.
Please feel free to add anything I may have missed on, ask your doubts or any other suggestions/advice in the comments section below.
Thanks you for reading!!
I Hope you enjoyed the article,stay tuned for more stories on new tech like Data Science, Blockchain, Quantam Computing,etc!! 😄
