📌 My Learning Journey in Data Science

A timeline of important milestones in my data science learning journey.
journal
Author

Migs Germar

Published

July 5, 2022

Welcome to my timeline of my data science learning journey. I regularly update this post with new milestones.

How I started studying data science

I first found out about data science in March 2020, around the time that the COVID-19 pandemic started. I decided to take online courses about data science in the summer, in order to see if it was interesting. First, I took the Python Core, Data Science, and Machine learning courses on Sololearn.

Here, I learned basic skills in Python, the Spyder IDE, Jupyter Noteboook, SQL basics, and Python packages such as NumPy, pandas, Matplotlib, and Scikit-learn.

Data Science in Practical Research

When school started again in September 2020, I was able to apply my data science skills in my project for Practical Research class. My group’s research paper was entitled “The Effect of COVID-19’s Consequences on Philippine Frontliners on their Mental Health: A Descriptive, Correlational Study.” We collected survey responses from 196 frontliners. I wrote the entire analysis in Python, from data cleaning to transformation to modeling.

I had to learn new things in order to do this, including:

  • Statsmodels, a statistical package in Python
  • Dummy-coding categorical variables
  • Multiple linear regression
  • Testing the assumptions of OLS regression
  • Interpreting model results

Dataquest Online Platform

From May 2021 to April 2022, I studied the Data Scientist in Python (DSP) career path on Dataquest. The courses included many guided projects in Jupyter Notebook, some of which have been posted on my blog.

Read more about what I learned from the DSP path in this blog post.

2021 Project SPARTA Butuan City Open Data Challenge

I led a team to participate in this competition from June to November of 2021. I developed agriHanda, an agricultural disaster risk dashboard for Butuan City, Philippines. For this, we won the Second Placer award and Best in Ingenious Solution award.

Read more about this competition in this blog post.

Data science projects in Grade 12

I made the Student Mapping Project under the Programming Varsity (ProgVar) in order to help identify students who live in areas affected by natural hazards.

Under the Data Analytics Committee (DAC), I made the College Applications Dashboard to visualize the results of a survey about my schoolmates’ college choices and the factors influencing them.