"You know Nii, Data Science is going to be the next big thing and I wouldn't want you to be left out, I will start taking online courses to develop my knowledge and skills in this field." These words of my intelligent friend, Ama, who was pursuing her bachelor's in Economics, Mathematics, and Statistics birthed my passion for a career in Data Science.
Ama was a friend that was always abreast with trends and technology. Her wise words stuck with me in our final year, and I had time on my side, it was not too late to change my career path. I mean, when is it actually too late to venture into a new career?
My curiosity and proactive nature drove me to begin my research into Data Science. I started reading books and taking online courses in Data Science which piqued my interest in the course, hence my application for the Data Science Bootcamp organized by PyData Ghana.
PyData Ghana is an institution championing the development of data-related skills such as data analysis not only among developers but amateurs. The skills they develop are in fields that include but are not limited to Data Science, AI & ML.
I had my doubts about my application to the program because of my level of experience in Data Science and felt it would be a tough competition to be selected. Nevertheless, I applied.
Primarily my persevering spirit was what pushed me not to give up and remembering Ama's nuggets of wisdom kept me motivated.
Secondarily, the knowledge of how big corporations globally depend on data to derive an in-depth understanding of trends within their businesses and use this data for future adjustments to promote growth and stability fuelled my desire to be an asset to such businesses with the skills and knowledge I would gain from the Bootcamp.
My enrolment into this Bootcamp was my first step toward a successful career in data science and to be part of the "big thing" Ama spoke of.
So yeah, I made it into the program and completed the 6-weeks training. The entire duration of the program was productive and fun. We learnt new things in our daily training sessions. The program had a more structured learning environment where we were provided with the right study materials to use in our 'data journey'.
We were introduced to python for data science with a focus on data gathering, data processing, and data visualization. Under data gathering, we used the beautiful soup, requests, and selenium libraries to scrape web pages. We then learnt to manipulate data using Pandas and NumPy libraries in the data processing phase. Finally, under data visualization, we used matplotlib and seaborn libraries to represent our data in graphical forms. Some of the projects and assignments I worked on can be found here.
Thanks to the PyData Ghana and Python Ghana team for organizing and championing this program and to our instructor, Mr. Boadzie Daniel who always made studying Data Science fun and easy.
Note: For anyone considering Data Science, I strongly recommend you reach out to PyData Ghana and Python Ghana on their socials to know when the next Data Science BootCamp would be coming up. I believe that this is the BEST way and first step towards reaching their data science goals.