Finally! That’s the thought I had when I finished this blog site with a few more touch up to the contents and layout.
I had just finished a 12 weeks intensive course on Data Science and the parting words from the instructor was “This is not the end guys, this is just the beginning. Continue to hone your skills…”
Now that I have a some ‘me’ time, I reflected on how this 12 weeks has made an impact on me.
What have I been up to?
After being in the banking industry for 10+ years, from living the pre-lehman life, surviving the sub-prime crisis, to the period where banks are under scrutiny from regulators their tsunami of compliance requirements, I figure that it was the time for me to explore area beyond the world of banking and finance. I have always been keen in analyzing stuffs, and the biggest joy from my analysis, is that I find unexpected insights. I was exploring some data science and python course on Udemy, when I happened to chance across an introductory talk to data science by General Assembly (GA). During the talk, I was intrigued by how one can bring value to the organisation when they leverage on data science & machine learning.
12 weeks of ‘monk life’
Fast forward 2 months, here I was, sitting in the class with 22 fellow budding data science classmates. Without boring you with the details, in general, I would breakdown my 12 weeks experience in to the follow points.
- Your classmates and instructional team will be your FAMILY.
- Google & Stack Overflow are your best FRIEND.
- Youtube will be your tuition teacher.
- Community learning is the best way to expedite your learning.
- Getting clean dataset is like finding unicorn.
- Start small, start simple.
- You’ll spend 80% of your time to clean the data, 20% for the more sexy stuffs. (model building / optimisation / deployment)
- Be like medieval monks, organise weekly beer sessions.
- Besides keeping sanity, it may have unintended side effect of helping you to code faster.
- There’s never a best way to a problem/ model, it DEPENDS.
Going Forward
I will continue to hone my skills in Data science and Machine learning technique to stay sharp. (More readings and keeping myself abreast of new techniques from fellow practitioners!)
I will also post more mini-projects in my portfolio page to share my findings.
Hope to see ya around!