Outline:
- What is Data Science?
- What is Machine Learning?
- Where to Begin
- Data Science Bootcamps
- Data Science Tutorials & Courses
- Online Data Science Master’s Degrees
- In-person Data Science Master’s Degrees
- Websites to Follow for Data Science Content
- Data Science Books & Book Resources
- Top Data Science Influencers on Social Media
- Machine Learning & Other Helpful Article Series
What is Data Science?
- Quora thread “What is Data Science?” — There are some excellent answers in this link!
- Check out Data Science Summarized in One Picture from Vincent Granville & datasciencecentral.com
- What is Data Science by Mike Loukides
- Data Science via Wikipedia
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning is the idea that there are generic algorithms that can tell you something interesting about a set of data without you having to write any custom code specific to the problem. Instead of writing code, you feed data to the generic algorithm and it builds its own logic based on the data.Adam GeitgeyAdam Geitgey covers the description of Machine Learning brilliantly in this article.Nick Heath’s article What is machine learning? Everything you need to know is an excellent article for anyone trying to get a good feel for the machine learning landscape.
Where to Begin
What is your goal in terms of data science?What does success look like?Everyone has motivations, goals, and expectations. It’s best to understand those before you begin.With that said, I’m going to show you what I think is a sensible approach. If you have specific questions based on your situation, feel free to comment on this post and I’ll get back to you as soon as possibleI’m a bit partial, but I think K2 Data Science’s free Data Science foundations content is an excellent place to begin.K2 is a Data Science boot camp, and I went through their program. This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for Ty Shaikh & K2, but I have immense respect for the program they’ve built.
Education Options
If you’re interested in furthering your skills, you will likely choose to either self-teach, go through a Data Science Bootcamp, or enter into a Master’s in Data Science Program.Bootcamps
- K2 Data Science: You’ve already heard my spiel. I loved my experience with their program & live mentors. A huge perk is that the course is completely remote & self-paced. Read Quora reviews for the program.
- Galvanize: I don’t know enough about their program to comment, but here are the Quora reviews.
- SwitchUp.org’s article, Best Data Science Bootcamps: The 2018 Comprehensive Guide. I don’t know anything about their ranking criteria or where they drew their data from, but the article has some helpful content.
Data Science Tutorials
I’d start with Hackr.io’s list of online tutorials and courses. Their list is voted on by members of their community and consists of paid and free courses.Online Master’s Degrees in Data Science
I will provide a more thorough breakdown of the pros & cons of schools in a future article. For the time being, these are my top 4 from my research and prep from grad school.- Johns Hopkins MS in Data Science
- UC Berkeley Masters of Information and Data Science
- Carnegie Mellon University MS in Information Technology in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics
- Northwestern MS in Data Science
In-person Master’s Degrees in Data Science
If you’re serious about data science and looking to go to school check out this list of schools offering Master’s Programs.Websites for Data Science Information
- Once again, Vincent Granville and Data Science Central are my favorite place online for all things data.
- KDNuggets is another one of my favorite resources for tutorials, courses, and datasets.
- Kaggle is another site that can be an excellent resource for people in the data space. Kaggle holds enormous data competitions and has tons of datasets.
- Inside Big Data is another great source for all things Machine Learning
Data Science Books & Book Sources
- Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know About Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett
- Numsense: Data Science for the Layman (no math added) by Annalyn Ng and Kenneth Soo.
- The Art of Data Science: A Guide for Anyone Who Works with Data by Roger Peng (Author) and Elizabeth Matsui (Contributor)
Data Science Influencers
- Vincent Granville: The guy puts out high-quality content on Data Science Central… EVERY DAY. His LinkedIn feed is jammed with value. Twitter
- Kirk Borne: His Twitter feed is stupid valuable. I stalk Kirk on Twitter & LinkedIn for information. I suggest you do the same.
- Andrew Ng: His Machine Learning courses at Stanford are the stuff of legend & also free on Youtube. Andrew is also active on Medium, as well as Twitter. Andrew is a co-founder of Coursera, a professor at Stanford, and all-around genius. Here’s his personal site if you can’t get enough of Andrew.
- KDNuggets — Top 10 Active Big Data, Data Science, Machine Learning Influencers on LinkedIn, Updated. This is a pretty solid list but still lacks Vincent. That may be due to his site being a competitor to KDNuggets.
Machine Learning & Other Helpful Content Series
Adam Geitgey’s Machine Learning is Fun! Series
Adam’s produces some of my favorite content to read, review, and share with people. Any new Data Scientist would be smart to at least skim through his articles.- Part 1: The world’s easiest introduction to Machine Learning
- Part 2: Using Machine Learning to generate Super Mario Maker levels
- Part 3: Deep Learning and Convolutional Neural Networks
- Part 4: Modern Face Recognition with Deep Learning
- Part 5: Language Translation with Deep Learning and the Magic of Sequence
- Part 6: How to do Speech Recognition with Deep Learning
- Part 7: Abusing Generative Adversarial Networks to Make 8-bit Pixel Art
- Part 8: How to Intentionally Trick Neural Networks
Cookie Engineer’s Machine Learning for Dummies Series:
First Round article by Instacart VP of Data Science, Jeremy Stanley:
- Doing Data Science Right – Your Most Common Questions Answered