🔥 Matt Dancho (Business Science) 🔥
🔥 Matt Dancho (Business Science) 🔥

@mdancho84

13 Tweets 1 reads Jan 05, 2023
It took me 5 years to call myself a data scientist.
I'll teach in 2 minutes how to avoid mistakes that would have saved me 4.5 years:
#datascience #rstats #python
Mistake 1. Trying to learn everything.
Math, coding, stats, deep learning...
APIs, machine learning, algorithms...
SQL, R, Python, Julia...
C++, Rust, Spark...
Trying to learn all this stuff at once is impossible.
Do this instead:
Find a real project.
Something you can get excited about.
This will give you a roadmap for what to learn.
Mistake 2: Taking bootcamps
Bootcamps teach a ton of random skills.
Machine learning was just a list of tutorials on how to use 30 algorithms
This had me confused.
Why?
Only 10% of the stuff I learned in bootcamps was important.
But which 10%?
And I couldn't use any of it without prerequisites like data visualization and data wrangling.
So a 6-week BootCamp was a complete waste of time.
Try this instead:
Take the project from step 1.
And break it down into the parts you think you might need to solve it.
You could be wrong on some things, but that's OK.
Just pick up the skills on the things you need to do to solve THAT project.
Mistake 3: Mastering topics before starting
This was a massive time killer for me.
I'd research things on end.
And it would be **weeks** before I would start on my project.
Why?
Internally, I thought I had to be an expert on a subject.
I'd say things to myself like:
What if I got it wrong?
Or if I mess this up, I might get fired.
News flash - You'll make mistakes (That's how I learned the most).
And you won't get fired for trying to do good
Try this:
Go for it.
Pick up enough R or python code to solve the part of the project that is right in front of you.
If it's loading data, just learn how to connect to that data source.
If it's making a plot to see what's in your data, just learn that 1st plot.
Learning the strategies to avoid these 3 mistakes...
Could have easily cut 4 years and 6 months off my journey.
And probably saved some desk pounding and screaming along the way.
If you'd like to go deeper, I have a free 40-minute webinar that covers:
How to avoid the 3 mistakes more in-depth
And gives you 10 skills that gave me superpowers
Here's what these 10 skills did for me...
These 10 skills were responsible for:
1. 3 promotions in one year
2. Doubling my salary $75K --> $150,000/year
3. Savings to my company of millions (my CEO gave me a ton of recognition)
What's the next step?
Just watch my free webinar here (and take good notes)
Watch here: learn.business-science.io

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