How to Make $1,000,000 a Year In Data Science and Machine Learning — A Fool-Proof Method

Jason Bell
CodeX
Published in
3 min readAug 5, 2021

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Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

Now I know what you are thinking, “Jase, a million dollars! Come on!”. Hear me out, if you follow these rules properly then you have as much chance as everyone else. Three easy to follow rules….

Learn Python and all the other paraphernalia.

Sadly the path to the top will require some grinding and hustling (who doesn’t like a good tech hustle, eh). So learn some Python, make sure you have a good idea how the following work:

  • Python — Sadly it doesn’t have much of a map/reduce pattern like functional languages do but another thirty lines of code won’t hurt, no pain no gain! :)
  • How to load CSV files
  • Mean, mode, median, interquartile ranges, meaner, really mean, just plain horrible.
  • How to panic when you run out of memory on machine.
  • Keras, Tensorflow, FastAI or something like that, or all of them. By the end of the tutorials you’ll know every aspect of an Iris that you won’t need machine learning. Someone, somewhere will have done something on YouTube.
  • Train on Cat/Dog pictures. Or Hotdogs if you want….
  • Linear Regression, actually do this in R, far more fun and you’ll learn a new set of swear words.
  • How to plot thing, all the things. Whether they are right or not, it’s snazzy visuals that get the cheques signed (yes, that’s how we write checks over where I live).

Now off to Linkedin and Twitter, create your profiles and wait for the private recruiter messages to roll in. “I see you do data science, Iris and Cat/Dog pictures!”, Yes You Do!

Make Hot Sauce aka Data Science Redux

In the middle of cleaning CSV files (forgot to mention that, that’s your hob now), you’ll get hungry but so busy you won’t leave the house. Thanks to Hot Wings on YouTube, and to the the likes of Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Gordon Ramsey and Gary Vaynerchuk, everyone and their gerbil are in on the hot sauce craze now.

The year of our lord, 2020 brought a huge influx (and acid reflux) of hot sauce producers across the globe. I bought some too, I wasn’t immune to their sales powers. Over 46% of hot sauce production is made from small indie producers.

With the pandemic we all needed a method to remind our brains that the taste buds were actually connected.

So get the pan on and chuck anything in. Fruit, veg, car parts, aviation fuel or anything else that comes to hand. Grab a domain name, a Shopify account and off you go (plus all other local laws about food production and so on).

My only regret in all of this was not buying shares in Rennies and Gaviscon.

So with the data cleaning and the gut cleaning we come to the last tip.

Buy a Lottery Ticket Every Week aka The Probability Side Hustle

You didn’t think for a second that coding in Python, when everyone else is doing it, was going to make you a millionaire?

So, the Powerball it is. Five balls and no Powerball required. And there are 52 chances here, so with an outlay of $104 (those Hot Sauce sales will cover it) you are well on your way to that million!

Come on, remember at the start you had as much chance as everyone else. Well you have, 1 in 11,688,053 to be exact.

Improbable but not impossible!

It’s Just Mindset!

There you have it, three fool proof ways to make that million in a year. You can use one or all three at the same time, if you have too much hot sauce you’ll forget you ever learned to program. Data science is an emerging concept where no one has much of an idea but will happily tell you how to do it.

If you found value in my advice, or it gave you a laugh, then feel free to send it to someone else. Unless you are already a millionaire, then feel free to buy me a tea instead. :)

Love Jase.

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Jason Bell
CodeX
Writer for

The Startup Quant and founder of ATXGV: Author of two machine learning books for Wiley Inc.