I'm going to discuss how I learned well
learning data science because I think
learning is an ongoing journey it will
be wrong to say that I have learned it
and I'm going to discuss my whole
journey and
in the end I'm going to discuss the two
most important skills in data science
journey so please make sure you watch
till the end
let's begin with my background. I have
a bachelor's in computer science and I
have been working as a software engineer
for last 15 years so my main role has
been
that of a software engineer so I don't
have a formal education in data science
I don't have any statistics or math
degree
but i'll tell you how i picked up my
interest so seven years
back when I was working in my software
engineering team
we were using mainly pearl and shell
script
for automating you know small tasks
within our team
at that time python started becoming
popular
so I tried python for one or two scripts
and I fell in love with it
because of the very easy syntax that it
offered
so compared to paul or shell script it
took very less time to automate a task
using python
so I started automating small tasks at
my job using python so python is great
with
with this kind of stuff if you're in
college or if you're working
in any role there is a scope of using
python to automatically automate your
day-to-day tasks okay so I started
learning python
and after that I picked up something
very important
uh very important tool that any data
scientist will use
and do you have any hint on what that
tool is by the way that thing is in the
background somewhere
yes you guessed it right that's
pandas so pandas allows you to do data
cleaning data exploration
and I learned about panda from some blog
on internet I started learning pandas
myself
started building small notebooks around
it
and then I introduced pandas in my team
so I told my colleagues that okay look
this is a great thing this is a great
tool so why don't we start using it
and then we started using it at my job
and in parallel I started
making videos on pandas they say that
the best way to
learn something is to start teaching it
and i'm a huge believer in that so I
started teaching pandas and that
consolidated
my own understanding because what
happens is when you post a video someone
will ask a question on pandas
and then if I don't know the answer I
will figure it out i will respond to
that answer
so it kind of consolidates your
understanding and
it makes the whole concept more clear
basically
so this way of teaching promotes a
critical thinking
almost right and because of that
my own understanding about pandas became
more and more strong as I practiced on
more like kegel data set
I made more videos and things like that
and there is a quote by Einstein saying
that if you cannot explain it simply
you have not really understood it so I
was always like okay
I want to explain this concept in a most
precise clear way and
that will confirm my understanding about
my own topic so I consider myself
a lifelong student you know on youtube
channel when I'm posting videos people
call me sir but
I'm really a student I spend one
to two hours daily almost daily to learn
something new because there are so many
exciting things happening in the field
of data science
so I just constantly learn new things
and as i said that teaching
promotes critical thinking let's say
I'm explaining gradient descent to a new
student
now we talk about loss mean square error
and students usually ask me why do we
use mean square error why why can't we
take a simple
absolute right and at some point I did
not know that so I googled it I talked
with my friends and I found out
that by using mean square error the
gradient will converge smoothly you know
so and then you learn about convex
function
okay now what is convex function I don't
have a degree in math
so i will ask this question to my best
friend
and you know who is my best friend
everyone please
repeat with me Google is my friend
google is my friend
google is my best friend
so if you have a question ask google so
then what is convex function
and google will probably tell you give
you the answer so so
I learned math and test statistics
that way because
if I had spent time just learning math
and statistics for less six months it
would have taken so much time
right so all right so I learned python
then I learned pandas then I started
andrew Ang's famous
machine learning course now probably
everyone is aware about his course he's
very popular in the field of machine
learning
his videos are available on youtube. I
think and on coursera also that course
is available for free so I went through
that course
and as i was going video by video let's
say I learn about linear regression
now in linear regression you know what
is linear regression really and what is
greater and decent and how
what is cost function what is mean
square error so all these concepts
I will learn by referring to
various resources so for math a can
academy is an excellent course
there is a Youtube channel called three
blue one brown
math is fun.com is another excellent
resource mathisfun.com is like
explaining math to kids you know very
simple exam
examples they use and it's so good I
love that website
so i would go through andrew hanks let's
say decision tree video
and if that machine learning concepts
require
me to get clarity on five different
math and statistics concept then i'll
pause that video
I will go to internet you know go
through those concepts
and then learn those concepts and then
come back so it's always like
here is your main fork your learning
machine learning then math statistics
you have to always
come out learn math and statistics go
back
then again machine learning come out
again learn math and statistics
so I continued that journey now
someone asked me this question how do I
keep myself motivated
well see the idea is if we are producing
something tangible
after learning a concept that will keep
the motivation high
for me it was youtube so if I learn some
concept
I make a video on it okay video gets a
lot of views
and those going up like those views
going up
it's kind of a mental reward you know it
generates this
brain stimuli almost and people ask
question I respond to that question so I
feel like
I learned decision tree but I'm
making some good
use of that it's not like I learned
mission decision tree and
that's it nothing happened you can build
small solutions for local businesses or
build some small
products where you can use your
knowledge
and when you see your knowledge being
transferred into a
tangible product that is useful to
someone
that will keep the motivation high okay
and I always take one thing at a time in
a small small step
and don't worry about too many things
because it might be overwhelming machine
learning and data science is
so vast sometimes people like are like
oh
and am I going to learn it well take a
small step every day
okay and over a period of time you build
your knowledge
then chem statistics statistics is
equally important
and for statistics I have another great
youtube channel that I refer to
and you probably know about it bam
steadquest statequest is the channel I
refer to
for statistics and there is a book
called practical statistics for data
scientists that
I'm reading you know I keep on reading
keep on referring to that book
so there are some books some resources
available for statistics
that I always you know on ongoing
basis I refer
and get my understanding clear when I'm
learning pandas or machine learning
I always believe in project based
learning so I refer to kegel for
different data set
with different challenges you know they
they post different data sets and you
can also look at
notebooks created by other people so you
kind of get different ideas on data
exploration
how to build machine learning models and
so on so i kept on practicing that
on my free time and then I started
building
small projects so data science projects
if you look at those projects on my
channel
I have built two different projects one
is
let's say Bangalore property price
prediction website so I build
an end-to-end website with machine
learning deployed to amazon
cloud and so on and I learn things
by practicing those things on my own and
then i share with people on youtube
so again going back to learning by
teaching concept
uh i started building those projects the
other project
was a spot celebrity image
classification
so that I learned about you know
computer vision and things like that
so that way by building those projects
uh i
shared my knowledge with people and at
the same time I consolidated
my own understanding now
I mentioned this before that every day
one to two hour
I spent learning something new and I
made a different video on how do I stay
updated in the field of data science but
I'll quickly summarize it
so I attend two or three conferences
every year
I don't spend money in upgrading my
phone or buying some expensive items but
I make sure I spend money in attending
conferences because for me conferences
and network building is a very very
crucial thing for my career
so I attend jupiter con pi data
ai events such as gtc. gtc was free this
year nvidia it is a con
biggest ai conference by nvidia and in
those conferences
I will also attend workshops for example
in pi data I attended
nlp workshop in gtc I attended deep
learning workshop
so by going through this workshops
you get to learn something new you know
i have that curiosity that I want to
learn something new so we need to have
that student
mindset like never think that I'm done
studying something and because of that I
get to know about
new concepts every day for example I
learned about rapids
and ask data frame from a pi data
conference
okay so i would learn a new term and
then I will come back home
I would Google it I would try it out on
my own
and that way i build my knowledge on a
given topic
and the best thing about conferences is
the networking you get to meet
data scientists and machine learning
engineers working for top companies
and I make sure I add them in LinkedIn
during that conference
so I build that network which is
super useful for my my career growth and
then I
read some blogs as well such as
towards data science
analytics video dot com I attend ml
seminars and my job
again that allows me to learn new things
I follow certain twitter
handles such as the twitter handle by
person called elvis
and I'm going to provide all these links
in the video description below by the
way
then I follow LinkedIn post you know
I'm connected with
data scientists machine learning
engineers around the world so if you
also connect yourself then if you
spend some time every day on linkedin
you will also learn
a lot of new things and then there are
live interactions that i'm doing on my
youtube channel with
data scientists throughout the world and
when i'm doing that interaction
I almost always learn on new topic
or a new thing
thing from other people podcast is
another great way
data frame super data science are the
two forecasts that I follow
again they invite the industry leaders
in the data science and
AI and you know by listening to those
discussions let's say you're driving to
work
you can listen and listen to those
podcasts in the audio format rather than
wasting your time on you know
just surfing internet facebook or
watching news you know it's not very
useful
i mean many days i watch news you know
after like two three days i i sometimes
have
news fast day where i don't consume news
at all
and that has helped me a lot personally
now let's discuss the two most important
skills in my opinion
that any data scientist need to have and
how i am learning those skills
number one skill is business
understanding and analytical thinking
as a data scientist you know you're
solving a business problem at the end of
the day and if you don't
have a good business understanding there
is no point of using your skills
right so I'm in a finance industry
and I always ask meaningful questions
for finance business to my colleagues I
have my colleagues who are
expert in finance field and i'm always
curious about
you know various things which are going
on in finance industry and these are not
technical things these are like
you know you call it a domain knowledge
i also do google and try to build my
understanding in finance because i have
been in this domain for last 10 years
now
you could be associated with any domain
the good thing is data science is
applicable in any domain right so if you
are in
a petroleum engineer or a mechanical
engineer there is an applicability of
data science
in that domain and having a solid domain
or business understanding is a very
important skill that
a data scientist need to have so
if you are in your field you are talking
with your colleagues you are talking
with your business partners
always have this curiosity
and always try to think about what pain
a business or business owner is going
through
and how these tools you know python
machine learning these are just the
tools
and these tools solve a given problem so
given problem
is very important the understanding of
that problem is important
and then you can apply you can open the
toolbox
and use one or the other tool to solve
a particular problem so building a
domain knowledge
is very crucial and most of the time I
have seen people don't focus on that
much
people focus like 90 to 95
of their time in technical skills and
that's the biggest mistake
now sometimes people say okay how do I
build domain knowledge well you build it
by doing it every day you need to have
that curiosity you need to be asking
that question to
right people and that will build the
understanding over a period of time it's
not gonna
happen magically so that's number one
skill
number two most important skill for a
data scientist is presentation
and storytelling okay I was reading this
howard business review article where
someone asked a question to a prominent
data scientist
in usa and the question was
which skill is more important for a data
scientist is it
building a deep learning model or
making amazing powerpoint slide and that
person answered
saying that powerpoint slides yes
that making a good effective
presentation and storytelling is
such a crucial skill and unfortunately
not many people spend
time on this now how do I build my
presentation skills well number one
I'm always looking for an opportunity to
present
or to give a seminar so in my team
when I'm talking with my colleagues you
know I'm always eager to present
so if I see a little opportunity I will
enroll myself you know I would volunteer
even I go to my manager and say okay
can I speak on this event can I give a
talk
during this particular event and because
of that
when I create those opportunities for
myself
that gives me a platform to improve my
presentation skills
and my communication skills in general
you know I try to
communicate my ideas you know very few
words in a most precise way
and many times I would ask my colleagues
who are
listening to that presentation to give
me a critical feedback at the end of the
presentation so let's see if I'm
presenting on some idea
I would tell my my good friend that okay
give me a totally
blunt honest feedback on how I did
during that presentation
and that has helped me a lot because I
get a feedback such as you use a lot of
filler words or did I make a transition
smoothly from a problem statement to a
solution
because problem statement is very
important it's like if i'm talking about
tensorflow serving
i need to first explain what is the pain
what is the pain that tensorflow serving
sauce
it's like making kid hungry before
feeding him or her
the food right so
spending initial few minutes few seconds
on a problem
statement a pain point is very very
important then we
transition smoothly from pain to a
solution in a very effective manner I
like to use
visuals in my presentation there is a
great talk
on Youtube called death by powerpoint
I strongly suggest you leave all your
python deep learning courses
everything besides see those things are
secondary the most important thing is
presentation
business understanding so you watch this
video death by presentation
you will learn amazing skills
that can be helpful my friend moiselli
recently retweeted in lingering
saying that
you know I'm going to show that post
here see
CEOs make most money and what is the
tool they work on
ceos don't code in python they work in
powerpoint
so now you understand the importance of
powerpoint and presentation
in general these are the soft skills
that people don't pay too much attention
to well I had
if you found this useful please share it
with your friends and if you have
any ideas or any interesting
stories on your journey please post in a
video comment below I'll try to respond
to that comment
and thank you very much for watching.