11/4/23, 11:15 PM How to Self Learn Data Science in 2022

Jan 30, 2022 6 min read

How to Self Learn Data Science in 2022

Updated: Apr 17, 2022

A Project-Based Approach to Get Started in Data Science

grab the cheatsheet from our infographics gallery

As someone who don’t hold a degree in data science, I am truly passionate about this field and decided to
experiment on building my own curriculum to self learn data science in spare time. I would like to share my
experience and hope to bring some insights if you want to share the same journey.

Project based learning is a good starting point for people already have some technical background but also
want to explore the building blocks of data science. A typical data science / machine learning project comprises
a lifecycle - from defining the objectives, data preprocessing, exploratory data analysis, feature engineering,

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model implementation to model evaluation. Each phase requires different skillsets, mainly statistics,
programming, SQL, data visualization, mathematics and business knowledge.

I highly recommend Kaggle as the platform to experiment with your data science projects. With plenty of
interesting datasets and a cloud based programming environment, you can easily get data source, code and
notebooks from Kaggle for free. As a reader/writer on Medium , I also recommend using the platform to gain

data science knowledge from professionals and share your own project all at the same place.

Why Project Based Approach?

1. It is practical and gives us a sense of achievement that we are doing something real!

2. It highlights the rationale of learning each pieces of content. This goal-oriented approach provides a bird
eye view of how each little pieces work together to form the big picture

3. It allow us to actively retrieve the information as we are learning. “Active Recall” is proven to significantly
enhance information retention, compared to conventional learning mechanism which only requires
passively consuming knowledge.

Let's break down the project lifecycle into following 5 steps and we will see how each step connects to various
knowledge domain.

1.Business Problem & Data Science Solution

The first step of a data science project is to identify the business problem and define the objectives of an

experiment design or model deployment.

Skillset - Business Knowledge

At this stage, it doesn’t need technicals skill yet but demands business understanding to identify the problem
and define the objectives. First to understand the domain specific terminology appeared in the dataset, then to

translate a business requirement to a technical solution. It requires years of experience in the field to build up
your knowledge. I can only recommend some websites that increase your exposure to some business
domains, for example Harvard Business Review, Hubspot, Investopedia, TechCrunch. Additionally, I

recommend the book "Data Science for Business" as an integrated view of data science and business.

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Skillset - Statistics (Experiment Design)

After defining the problem, then it is to frame it into a data science solution. This starts with the knowledge in
Experiment Design such as hypothesis testing, sampling, bias / variances, different types of errors, overfitting /
underfitting.
In the article "An Interactive Guide to Hypothesis Testing in Python", I introduced various type of statistical
testing - t test, ANOVA, Chi Square test etc.
Machine Learning fundamentally can be considered as a hypothesis testing process, where we needs to

search for a model in the hypothesis space that best fits our observed data, and allows us to make prediction
to unobserved data.
Useful Resource:

Khan Academy: Study Design

A Gentle Introduction to Statistical Hypothesis Testing

Probability for Statistics and Machine Learning

2. Data Extraction & Data Preprocessing

The second step is to collect data from various sources and transform the raw data into digestible format.

Skillset - SQL
SQL is a powerful language for communicating with and extracting data from structured database.

Additionally, learning SQL also assists with framing a mental model that helps you to generate insights through
data querying techniques, such as grouping, filtering, sorting, and joining. You will also find similar logics

appearing in other languages, such as Pandas and SAS.

Useful Resources:

“Get Started with SQL Joins”

Datacamp: SQL fundamentals

Dataquest: SQL Basics

Skillset - Python (Pandas)

It is essential to get comfortable with a programing language. The simple syntax makes Python a relatively
easy language to start with. Here is a great video tutorial if you are new to Python: Python for Beginners -

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Learn Python in 1 Hour.

After a basic understanding, it is worth spending some time to learn Pandas library. Pandas is almost

unavoidable if you use python for data extraction. It transforms database into dataframe - a table like format
that we are most familiar with.In the stage of data preprocessing, it is required to examine and address
following data quality issues, and these can all be done using Pandas.

address missing data

transform inconsistent data type

remove duplicated value

Useful Resources:

Python Pandas Tutorial: A Complete Introduction for Beginners

W3schools: Pandas Tutorial

Python for Data Science for Dummies

3. Data Exploration & Feature Engineering

The third step is data exploration, also known as EDA (exploratory data analysis) which reveals hidden
characteristics and pattern in a dataset. It usually involves data visualization techniques, and followed by

feature engineering to transform data based on the results of exploration.

Skillset - Statistics (Descriptive Statistics)

Data exploration use descriptive statistics to summarize characteristics of the dataset

mean, median, mode

standard deviation, skewness

correlation, covariance

distribution

After a solid understanding of the dataset characteristics, it requires to apply the most appropriate feature

engineering techniques accordingly. For instance, use log transformation for right-skewed data and clipping
methods to deal with outliers. Here I list some common feature engineering techniques:

categorical encoding

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scaling

imputation

feature selection

Useful Resource:

3 Common Techniques for Data Transformation

Fundamental Techniques of Feature Engineering for Machine Learning

Feature Selection and EDA in Machine Learning

Skillset - Data Visualization

Combining statistics and data visualization allows us to understand the data through appropriate visual
representation. Whether you prefer using visualization package such as seaborn or matplotlib in Python and
ggplot2 in R; or visualization tools like Tableau and PowerBI, it’s essential to understand the use case of

different chart types:

bar chart

histogram

box plot

heatmap

scatter plot

...

If interested, feel free to check out my articles on EDA and data visualization:

Semi-Automated Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) in Python

How to Choose the Most Appropriate Chart?

Dashboard Design Principle

4. Model Implementation
After all of the preparation so far, it’s finally the time to dive deeper into machine learning algorithms.

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Skillset - Machine Learning

scikit-learn is a powerful Python library that allows beginners to get started in machine learning easily. It offers
plenty of built-in functions and we can implement a model using several lines of code. Although it has already
done the hard work for us, it is still crucial to understanding how the algorithms operate behind the scene and

be able to distinguish the best use case for each. Generally, machine learning algorithms are categorized into
supervised learning and unsupervised learning. Below are some of the most popular algorithms:
Supervised Learning:

Linear Regression

Logistic Regression

Neural Network

Decision Tree

Support Vector Machine

K-Nearest Neighbour

Unsupervised Learning:

Clustering

PCA

Dimension Reduction

I have created notebook and code snippet for machine learning algorithms. If you are interested, check it out:

Code Snippet

Notebook

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Other Useful Resources:

scikit-learn website

Coursera: Machine Learning with Python

Skillset - Math
Many starters including me may have the question of why we need to learn Math in data science. As a
beginner, math knowledge mainly assists in understanding the underlying theory behind the algorithms.

Moving forward, when we no longer rely on built in libraries for building machine learning models, it allows us to
develop and optimize advanced algorithms. Additionally, hyperparameter tuning also involves advanced math
knowledge for searching the best model that minimize the cost function.
This is when more complicated math topics come into place:

calculus

linear algebra

optimization problem

gradient descent

searching algorithms

Useful Resources:

3Blue1Brown: Essence of Linear Algebra

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3Blue1Brown: Essence of Calculus

3Blue1Brown: Gradient Descent

5. Model Evaluation
Skillset - Statistics (Inferential Statistics)
Inferential Statistics is particular useful when making model prediction and evaluating model performance. As
opposed to descriptive statistics, inferential statistics focuses on generalizing the pattern observed in the
sample data to a wider population. It provides evidence of which features have the high importance in making

inference. Also it determines the model performance based on evaluation metrics.

For example, for classification problem where the output is discrete category, some common metrics are:

Confusion matrix

Type 1 error / Type 2 error

Accuracy

ROC / AUC

Whereas, for regression problem where the output is continuous numbers, some common metrics are:

R Squared

Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE)

Useful Resources

Khan’s Academy: Statistics and Probability

Metrics to Evaluate your Machine Learning Algorithm

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Take-Home Message

It is a general guide that documents the learning journey I followed through, so I hope this can help some
starters that are also passionate about data science and would like to invest their spare time exploring this
field. Most topics I mentioned in the article are at surface level, and allows you to choose a field to dig deeper

based on your own preference. If you find it helpful and would like to read more articles like this, please support
by signing up Premium Membership.

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