As outlined in the about page, I’ve decided to make the most of the COVID-19 pandemic by pivoting my lifework and starting a career in Data Science.
While being on lockdown, I started diving into the rabbit hole that is Python, Statistics and general Data Science courses on services like Youtube, Coursera, Udemy and LinkedIn learning. If I’m being honest: learning by myself, facing the laptop and not interacting with anyone, that’s not for me at all… While it’s been great in rekindling my interest in maths and coding, I quickly fell into a slump, not making significant progress or figuring out how to apply what I learnt in my day-to-day business activities.
That’s when I heard about an up-and-coming Data Science bootcamp, hosted by Le Wagon in the not-so-far city of Brussels, Belgium.
I’d met with Le Wagon teachers and graduates when they were hosting their Web Development bootcamp in my former place of work, and knew the training was serious, intense and led to pivotal changes in career in a short time.
After a couple of interviews with their program managers, I’m now very excited to announce that I’ll be starting my full-time Data Science training in January 2021, on Zoom at first, hopefully on-site at some point when COVID vaccines become more readily available and lockdowns start to be lifted.
In the meantime, more motivated than before, I’m consuming more and more content to give myself an edge when the training starts. Here are the resources I’ve found valuable:
Python
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CS50: Python on Youtube: Kudos to Harvard for releasing this set of CS courses online for free. The Python one is the perfect introduction to the language, but would require you to have preliminary knowledge of programming before watching. It’s lesson 6, only 5 videos to watch before this one 😉.
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DataQuest.io: I don’t know why but they were running a free-week event when I started looking into it, which motivated me to run through as much of the content as I could. It’s perfect for putting language concepts into action.
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DataSchool: That was my go-to resource even before I decided to start the bootcamp. Tons of step-by-step guides to learn the fundamentals of Data Science and Python. A good batch available to guide you if you’re planning to launch a Data Science career.
Maths
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The Essence of Calculus playlist on Youtube. Since it’s not using the same notation as I was told in France, I had to supplement this with high-school-level (première and terminale) videos from NovelClass. It did wonders for my self-esteem 😆.
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Statistics Foundations 1, 2 and 3 by Eddie Davila on LinkedIn Learning: for brushing up on stats, covering the theoretical knowledge with a few real-world applications.
As I’m getting started, I hope I can share more resources soon.
What are your favorite Data Science resources to ramp up your skills?
Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash