|||
I was intrigued by the current buzzwords thrown around: data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence - just the mere association with them makes me feel intelligent. But where to start? What should I go for? Should I just dive straight into the most popular programming language? Or just read some book about them? Should I choose Tableau or just brush up on my SQL skills? I realise these questions are not directly answerable unless I answer another question:
Why am I learning about these?
I am driven by curiosity. And I would feel a certain accomplishment if I am able to learn another language. But there are so many out there, so which of these should I choose?
Then I realise I didn’t have enough information to choose them. So I took an introductory course for all of them. I took up:
I realised this was a great way to dip my toes into all these areas without putting down a full commitment in any of them. I learnt what most of them are for, and whether I am interested in them or not. In my research, I also find that course providers that combines both theory and practical are most useful for things that require hands on experience e.g. coding. This led me to Datacamp and Udacity.
Even after choosing the right course providers and dipping my toes in the many areas, I still haven’t got a strong why. This is where I started hunting for projects. These course providers actually provide projects too that test your skills. But instead of doing these theoretical ones, I asked around to see if anyone needed help in any of these areas and I can offer up my help for free. I got 2 offers.
This is how I end up learning google analytics and immediately applying that to the website. This is also how i end up going deep into R.
I hope my process here helps you to decide the kind of direction you want to go too. Let me know what you end up doing.
