Decision Mechanics

Insight. Applied.

Why it’s hard to find good data science courses

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Why is it so hard to find effective data science courses? For instance, courses that cover the practical work involved in going from problem to solution?

This is a question I was asked last week. To answer it, we can employ basic mathematics.

Draw a Venn diagram. Include the following sets.

  • people who are good at statistics
  • people who are good at coding
  • people who have good social skills
  • people who have good teaching skills
  • people who have good technical writing skills
  • people who couldn’t be making a shitload more money doing something else

Count the number of people in the intersection of those sets. That’s why.

Free on-line data science courses from Stanford

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Stanford has a number of free on-line courses in session that might be of interest to data scientists. They started last week, but you can still join.

Statistical Learning

The Statistical Learning course is an introductory-level course in supervised learning with a focus on regression and classification methods. The course uses R, and the text book, “An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in R”, is currently available as a free download.

Mining Massive Datasets

The Mining Massive Datasets course teaches algorithms for extracting models and other information from very large amounts of data, with an emphasis on techniques that are efficient and scale well. The course textbook, “Mining of Massive Datasets”, is currently available as a free download.

Machine Learning

The Machine Learning course provides a broad introduction to machine learning, data-mining, and statistical pattern recognition.