On momentum and sherpas
The General Assembly Data Science Bootcamp has been an intense experience — thirteen weeks of, . . ., of . . . ML intensity. Looking at the syllabus, in retrospect, the ask was daunting, and full of cryptic acronyms — EDA, NLP, NNs, ARIMA, SO, G4G, DBCAN, etc., etc., etc. This is the beginning of a journey, of course, not the end of one (does the data scientist’s journey ever really end).
When I take a minute to look back, I see the ground I covered to get to this stage. However, several stages remain between where I am now and the summit, metaphorically speaking. And it seems to me that maintaining momentum in the climb is key (use it or lose it, right). Fortunately, there’s a cornucopia of well-intentioned data science sherpa-senseis out there. For starters, there’s the corpus of GA alums, which includes my instructors and fellow students, and the extended group of DSI instructors and ex-students. Then there’s codingdojo.org and kaggle.com, and other coding-practicum based sites.
I’m sensing, though, that Covid world has stealthily accelerated a qualitative transformation of web-based education. Is that shocking? Practically an entire student generation was forced to plug into the web and participate in distance learning. But the university level may see a commitment to distance learning that was presaged by the massively open online courses (‘MOOC’) movement. Covid realities probably brought a new level of attention to web-based pedagogy.
When it comes to data science in particular though, a collateral benefit of practically mandatory distance learning seems to be the creation and dissemination of complete workshops from professors via Zoom and/or Git Hub. Of course, when Covid prompted the pivot to distance learning, DS professors came pre-loaded with an affinity for and a relatively high level of competency with the digital realm. This could include coding, coding concepts, IDEs, virtual machines, and repositories — DS infrastructure — and teaching students how to use them. These professors didn’t begin thinking about these topics in February 2020. In some sense, they’ve been thinking about them all the time for years. Slack time provided in Covid world led some DS experts to produce complete online DS workshops and offer them online via Git Hub.
Students like me are the beneficiaries of these sherpa-senseis. Their offerings provide a framework and structure for DS students who want to continue to learn and practice the DS craft with the benefit of keen guidance.
