This Week at Udacity, September 15 edition

If there was anything we were looking forward to more than the launch of the new Career Portal this week, I don’t know what it was.

This is one of the most highly-anticipated resources we’ve ever launched, and it’s near and dear to our collective Udacity heart because it’s such a direct expression of students connecting their learning to jobs.

Udacity Project Manager Amelia Lin had the honor of announcing the launch, and had this to say:

Landing a new job is one of the best feelings in the world, but searching for one can be daunting. For our Udacity Careers Team, our mission is to take the guesswork out of finding your new job. That’s why we created the Career Portal. You now have a customized path to getting hired, where you can track your step-by-step progress and get one-on-one feedback from experts along the way.

You can read all about the Career Portal right here!

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For the record, today was actually pretty exciting as well—new episode of Udacity Talks! This was a perfect episode to partner with our news below, as our guest was Amr Awadallah, co-founder and CTO of Cloudera!

Amr is one of the most influential voices in the Data space, and his guest appearance offered a perfect set up for our news about our Data Analyst Nanodegree program—read on below!

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So, our other really exciting launch this week was when we introduced the all-new Data Analyst Nanodegree program!

You can read all about the awesome new curriculum and project additions right here, but here are some of the highlights:

Python Included

The Change: The biggest change to the program is adding Python Programming as the first course.

The Details: You will now begin the Nanodegree program by learning Python. You’ll develop an understanding of important programming concepts, like loops, functions, and data structures, and learn to apply them in Python.

Python 2 Out, Python 3 In

The Change: The previous content that already included Python relied on Python 2.7. The new courses in the program will all use Python 3.6.

The Details: Python is an ever-evolving language, and we’ve updated the new courses to reflect the more recent changes. You will now benefit from the full functionality of Python, and the skills you learn will better align with employer expectations. You can read more about the differences between Python 2 and Python 3 here.

Machine Learning Optional

The Change: Machine learning is no longer a requirement to graduate from the program.

The Details: The focus of this program is to prepare you for data analyst jobs. Our research shows that machine learning is not a requirement for the vast majority of data analyst positions. So, we opted to remove it from the graduation requirements, allowing you to stay laser-focused on the topics most critical to your job search.

New Courses: Intro to Data Analysis, Statistics, Data Wrangling, SQL

The Change: These four courses have all been replaced by new versions that use Python 3. These new course versions feature fantastic instructors, including Udacity’s founder Sebastian Thrun!

The Details:

Intro to Data Analysis: The new course affords you more opportunities to work with Pandas and Numpy, two important data science libraries in Python. The course now uses Python 3, and provides a number of useful case studies.

Statistics: The new Practical Statistics course enables you to practice applying statistics using Python, as opposed to relying only on spreadsheets. It also includes instruction in A/B testing, linear regression, and logistic regression. This change is designed to ground statistics in more real-world contexts to show practical value.

Data Wrangling: The new Data Wrangling course relies on data science packages, like Pandas and NumPy, rather than using base Python. This makes the course much more practical; we’ve also added in more practice with real-world datasets.

SQL: SQL is a requirement for almost every data analyst job, and this new course gives you exactly the preparation you’ll need to succeed! It is designed specifically for data analysts and scientists, and relies on PostgreSQL, a database with amazing functionality for data analysis.

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I know, I know, you can’t take it anymore! It’s like going on the Jelly Belly Factory Four on Tangerine day, and not being able to visit the Sample Bar until the end of the tour. Meaning, I get it! You want the …

Tweet of the Week!

Can’t resist this one. Possibly because I’m hungry. From our colleagues in India, Udacity cupcakes!

Ok, one more, because we loved this exchange so much:

And THAT … is This Week at Udacity!