A checklist, book review and update on my data science learning!
In 2020 my goal was to learn data science. I started my journey in late January but kind of lost track with Coronavirus news ! Did I mentioned I am a news junkie too.
I have been back to learning in last few weeks and also read a fabulous book from the author of My Personal MBA; titled The First 20 Hours: How to learn anything Fast. In this book Josh Kaufman has shared two strategies, one for rapid skill acquisition in 20 hours of structured learning. This would work well if you want to learn something quickly and do not need a deep expertise in. His other technique is for effective learning, something that you would like to last for long and have a solid foundation. It is similar to immersion but little bit structured and you can still live your life without huge sacrifices. As if life wasn’t hard enough!
Ten major principles as per the book on effective learning:
- Research the skill and related topics.
- Jump in over your head.
- Identify mental models and mental hooks.
- Imagine the opposite of what you want.
- Talk to practitioners to set expectations.
- Eliminate distractions in your environment.
- Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization.
- Create scaffolds and checklists.
- Make and test predictions.
- Honor your biology.
After getting derailed from my target, I am following the above strategy now. I was already doing few of the things but distractions, lack of checklists and my erratic schedule made me less focused. If you are like me, may be this book will help you.
Update on my Data science education.
I have been following the path IBM Data science badge on coursera and I am on “Data analysis with Python” I have been on this some time now but I plan to finish it in March. I will also recommend a book Statistics for Dummies and 2020 Data science boot camp on Udemy from 365 Data science. I think if someone can do all three of these they would have the base to work on small DS projects as these will cover all your basics.