Startup Data Science: Can this Podcast Help Me Learn Data Science?
It depends.
Definite yes (this podcast will help) for people who don’t know much about data science, math, or statistics, but have a background in programming. Our first covered course — deep learning — teaches you how to be really effective with best-in-class results without knowing everything there is to know. Better yet, it gives you a great jumping off point for digging deeper into technical-driven data science because after getting results, you’ll have to learn more technical things to improve upon that. However, if you decide to just walk away with another tool in your pocketknife, then this is still a great.
If you’re 4+ months already into learning data science — down the path of Math, machine learning, statistics, and probability, then you might already be invested in what you’re already doing. Especially if you’re committed to being a specialist in data science. At this point, switching gears to a totally new concept might feel disruptive. On the other hand, if you really believe the future is deep learning, then might as well start now.
What if you don’t know any programming and are truly starting from scratch? In that case, take this python course (thanks for rec freecodecamp!) and feel free to listen to the podcast anyways. The material is pretty high-level and just hearing how things go might be really useful.
Also, you need to have 5 hours to dedicate per week to move at the speed of one podcast episode per week. For everybody except people aiming to be deep learning experts, I recommend capping your time at 5–10 hours per week and just moving on to the next lesson or homework. If you can’t find this time to dedicate, then I’d do something else or just listen to the podcast first while you’re traveling and see if you’re motivated enough to move things around to make it happen.
