✨ Imminent Data Scientist ✨

May 21st, 2020

Long time no talk! I’ll explain why… it’s official, I’ve been accepted at Metis!

Been a bit pre-occupied with the application to update here, but it ultimately paid off, and now I’d like to reflect. The application process was three rounds — a traditional application where I wrote a couple of short essays about my background, my passion for data science, and my aptitude for the Metis program; a technical challenge which involved answering questions in statistics, probability, linear algebra, calculus, and data interpretation, solving 5 python coding challenges similar to those outlined in the last post, and writing up a project proposal for a data science passion project you might complete as your final project in the program; and finally a video call interview with a data scientist/Metis alumni, to discuss further my background, do some live statistics problem solving, and brainstorm further around the project proposal.

First of all, I think this whole process was amazing preparation for what technical job interviews will entail, so I’m grateful to have had the experience. Each portion of the application went really well and I felt confident in each.

I had spent the weeks prior to the application not only studying and practicing both python and mathematics (just needed some refreshing since university), but coming up with and fleshing out a project idea that I’m actually really excited about and proud of, and would potentially want to scale in to an actual application after the program. In short, my idea is to create a data-driven yoga sequencing application intended for yoga teachers. It would automatically generate unique and complete yoga sequences that would guarantee safe and effective transitions, leading up to and out of any peak posture chosen by the user. Preliminary research has indicated that a neural network and bi-directional LSTM modeling, along with a Markov chain, could be used to this end. I’m sure I’ll share more as I begin development on this program, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Now that I’m officially in, everything feels so surreal, and tangible. I am actually on a fast-track toward the career and future that I’ve dreamed of. It’s been a real shift in my mental state and attitude — it feeling so real and immediate. I made a twitter and followed some of the lead data scientists at top companies, to start expanding my network, but more so to start being exposed to their opinions, best practices, and articles about innovation in the field they share. Already I’ve gained so much new information and gotten more of a feel for what other data scientists’ lives are like!