The Best Data Resources: How to Stay on Top of Your Industry
Technology is constantly advancing, and as someone who works in data (or aspires to), it is important to keep up to date. The best way to do this is to have a variety of different resources; be it social media, news, blogs or forums.
With so much to chose from, we thought we’d help you select the resources that will offer you the best quality information, so we have compiled a list of our favourite every day learning resources below:
1. Data blogs
Python Weekly is a free weekly newsletter focusing on all things relevant to Python. The Newsletter features the most recent news and articles in the Python World.
Flowing data offers a variety of quirky articles as well as data visuals, however this site is more than a blog. Flowing data also provides tutorials and courses in data, but in order to access these elements of the site you have to commit to a paid membership.
R-bloggers is a platform displaying content by bloggers who write about R. Essentially, it encourages people to blog themselves, whilst also providing a space for R users to communicate with one another.
Data science central is how it sounds: a centre for all things data science. Whilst the site does look a little outdated, it is easy to use, and with blogs, webinars, forums, news and more: the sight captures the data science industry, from every angle.
O’Reilly Media has specific pages for different aspects of data and tech — such as AI, data, software engineering etc — making each page much more useful to its reader as it is based solely on the topic in question.
2. Data Communities
Data Science Stack Exchange is a bit like Quora, but specifically for data science. It is a question and answer site for Data science professionals, Machine Learning specialists, and those wanting to learn more about the field.
Analytics Vidhya is a community that encompasses all the most current elements of the data world. Particularly focused on analytics, the site also provides the opportunity to learn more, compete with other analysts and engage in discussions.
Quora is a platform that enables you to read questions people have previously asked, and to ask your own questions on whichever subject matter you chose. Quora is a particularly useful resource, as you can deduce from the recently asked questions what is current within the data world, and also what people are predicting for the future of tech. Furthermore, the question and answer basis of the site enables you to discover people’s opinions on data science, rather than just facts and information.
KDNuggets is renowned in the data science community as a huge portal of relevant and useful information. It is a varied site, ranging from data science news to data science cartoons, and because of this KDNuggets depicts every aspect of data science: from the technicalities, to the most current conversations and theories in tech.
On Kaggle, you can put your data skills to the test by entering competitions. The site enables you to explore open datasets, and even provides the opportunity to learn new techniques too!
Reddit has Subreddits for everything you can think of, providing a space for a multitude of different communities. Because of this, the site captures the most prominent and recent discussions, and where data is concerned, the two most useful Subreddit’s are Machine Learning and Data is beautiful, offering data science news as well as interesting visuals with a pleasantly light hearted approach.
3. Data News
insideBIGDATA is a news platform that provides news, products and services for people in the world of big data. The site focuses on news that is relevant to data science, big data, AI, machine learning and deep learning.
Hacker News is a social new website. The site’s content focuses on computer science as well as entrepreneurship, however anything can be submitted as long as it gratifies “intellectual curiosity”.
Data science roundup is a website displaying individually curated data science articles in order of most recent. As the articles are individually picked they are some of the internet’s most useful data science articles.
Although Reddit is not a news site itself, it is very useful when trying to find out the latest news, as the site displays news pulled from resources all over the internet.
As the name suggests, Futurism focuses on all things that could impact our future, rather than solely focusing on the data world. However, as a lot of these things overlap, it is still a great resource. The site also has a section on videos and infographics, offering you even more insight into what the future may or may not hold.
4. Influential People in The Data World
A great way to find out what is current in the tech/data science world is through social media, particularly twitter. Below, I have listed some influential data scientists or data science platforms on twitter that will offer you some great insight:
- @kdnuggets (KDNuggets), the data science community I mentioned earlier in this article.
- @hmason (Hilary Mason), Data Scientist and Founder of Fast Forward Labs.
- @Ronald_vanLoon (Ronald Van Loon), Recognised expert and leader in the Data Science field.
- @TamaraMcCleary (Tamara McCleary), Branding expert and technology futurist.
- @EvanKirstel (Evan Kirstel), thought leader in technology and social media influencer.
- @AndrewYNg (Andrew Ng), VP and Chief scientist of Baidu and Co-Chairman of Coursera.
