Aspiring Data Scientist of a Certain Age — January 2020
Why not? Sure, people plan, G-d laughs. Even so, planning helps us, and not just to provoke divine merriment. This story will follow my intended process of becoming a data scientist. As an unemployed software engineer, I start by searching the web. After a few tutorials, some job posting analysis, and plenty of Medium articles, here is my study plan.
Part One — technical learning — who else loves learning calculus?
Brush up that Python for all kinds of usages. One of those is machine learning, which in turn requires statistics, which is important in its own right for understanding data. Properly understanding statistics requires some math. Finally, finally, I will learn integral calculus! Khan Academy is my new best friend. Stanford’s online Statistical Reasoning course is next in line. Including work I did on these already, I’m projecting finishing calc (after a review of differential calculus) and stat, plus Jose Portilla’s machine learning Python bootcamp, by my birthday in early June.
Part Two — visual analytics — how can anyone understand all that data?
Shift my perspective, and shift it again. Soak myself in relevant TED talks and books on how imagery makes clear the information hidden in the data. Do this concurrently with part one. Do it forever. I can’t decide which is more fun, math or graphics.
Part Three — networking — the introvert’s dilemma
Face it, getting jobs means talking to strangers. Not just people with similar enough interests to have shown up in person where you did. Not just perfectly good strangers becoming friends who choose to read your blog (thank you, dear Reader) but out-of-the-blue, I-saw-your-profile-on-linkedin, sorry-to-bother-you-strangers. Maybe I can put this part off for a while yet.
Part Four — portfolio time
Engineer with a conscience seeks non-profit with a mission
After investing the first half of 2020 in the first semester of my Individual Data Science Master’s Degree, my next step will be to build a portfolio by doing volunteer data science work for local non-profits. Start sooner if the synagogue environment committee needs a chart…
January 15, 2020
