Into the Unknown…Becoming a Data Scientist(DS) in a COVID-19 world
Three months ago, I signed up for a DS Bootcamp and I am surprised how tough it is to complete my first Project. I left my thinking cap in school 20 years ago after my BA in Business degree and now I find myself a student again after 20 years later. #what_was_I_thinking_of
There is only ONE GOAL in mind when I signed up for this course that is to get a job and get paid for my family expenses. 60% of jobs in the market now is IT related and there are 3 major segments in IT, namely, Cloud, Cybersecurity and Data Science. The DS Bootcamp is the fastest way into the IT highway. It is also the fastest way to a BRAIN JAM.
Project 1: MTA Turnstile Exploratory Data Analysis
My First Project is to analyse MTA turnstile data and to recommend the deployment of manpower to gather email sign up for a gala dinner. It seems easy at first glance but soon it became a herculean task. Data cleaning, calculating net daily commuters, ranking to 10 stations and putting information on a powerpoint had my weekend burnt. In the end, it all boiled down to a 5 mins group presentation. We are a 4 pax team and I had 1 min of fame to speak. “3 days work summarized into 1 min, how hard can it be?”, they say. It is difficult and in the end, the team took 7 minutes to complete. Please see link to my repo here. It is not pretty but it is my first assignment after all these years. #gone_in_60_seconds.
Speaking a Foreign Language called PYTHON
(not that snake, I mean the code)
After the first week in the Bootcamp, I find myself speaking a new Tongue called PYTHON. Using the the terms PANDA’s, NUMPY’s and Matplotlib’s became my second nature now. Abbreviations, such as np, py, sns,plt, etc, has become part of my daily vocabulary with my team mates. I will continue my 12 weeks of “Hell” Bootcamp and hopefully emerged on the other side, like phoenix rising from the ashes, REBORN again. Only this time, it is REBOOTED on a NEW OS. This week is Project 2 and it will be solo one. I hope I can survive this one too. #LONG_LONG_WAY_TO_GO.
Join me on this journey as I make my way to become a DS at 40+ years old. #anything_is_possible
