A doctor's journey to data science

If you haven't read the first part of this story, check it out here

The Python Ghana Data Science Full Course Intensive Training(Beginner Level) boot camp took place from 17th February to 26th March,2022. It was a 6-week session combining virtual and in-person classes. It was fully sponsored.

In the first 2 virtual classes, we did an introduction to Data Science. I learnt about the tools and techniques data scientists use. Some examples of the programming languages used are Python, R, SQL and Julia. I can only use Python for now. I look forward to learning the others soon. The development tool we used throughout the course was Jupyter Notebook. We discussed the applications of data science in the field of banking, health care, agriculture, transport, finance, etc. In fact, data scientists are needed in virtually every job sector and thus acquiring skills in that area increases your value. Finally, I learnt about careers in Data Science as well as technical and non-technical skills needed to be a data scientist. My favorite non-technical skill is curiosity. I deem myself as a very curious person. Whenever I notice pattern, I ask, “Why”? Why is this happening? Is there something wrong with the data or is this an actual pattern going on? Can we conclude anything from this pattern? This skill is extremely important because the biggest question in Data Science is “Why”. If you're like me, you may want to give Data Science a shot too.

During the first in-person class, we were taught web scraping with Beautiful Soup. Prior to that class, I had never heard about it but some of my course mates had; so they were able to answer all questions the tutor asked. That session moved pretty fast for me as a novice, I just followed the motion and copied the codes that were projected without understanding any of it. I wasn't happy with myself after that session so I texted one of my friends who is a data engineer and told him about my challenge. He sent me this YouTube video as a guide. I must say, this video was so helpful. In the subsequent weeks, I also learnt about web scraping with Selenium and Xpath. Using that knowledge, I was able to scrape some products from Jumia , their prices and the links attached to the products. I was able to scrape some remote data science jobs from Indeed.com

Next, I learnt how to create, read and write to files using Python. Then, I explored how to read in different types of file formats(csv, Excel) using the Pandas library as well as some Numpy basics(array creation, basic operations on arrays, universal functions, shape manipulation, indexing, etc) . I then learnt how to clean data with Pandas as well as visualizing data with Matplotlib and Seaborn. To test our understanding of the concepts, we did some assignments.

Apart from the opportunity to learn data science skills, I learnt a lot about team work during the boot camp and made a lot of friends. I am quite extroverted so every opportunity to meet new people excites me. These were people I could easily reach out to at any point when I am struggling to grasp a concept or struggling with an assignment. So even though I was a novice, I didn't feel completely left out. It was also a good chance to build my social capital and be part of the Python community. Our tutors, Daniel Boadzie and Mannie Young were very patient with us and always willing to help. The session also emphasized the importance of documenting data science projects; that was my main motivation to start this blog. We also got the chance to have zoom sessions with resource personnel from Nvidia and Python Foundation. I had a really great time during the boot camp. I particularly enjoyed the in-person sessions on Saturday.

After learning all these and submitting all my assignments, the real test of these skills came with our final project. Successfully completing the project was the prerequisite for obtaining a certificate for the boot camp and was determined to ace that. The first project involved scraping products from Yarn Plaza. It was a lot more complex than the web scraping assignments I had submitted earlier. It gave me the chance to explore web scraping more till I eventually figured it out. To say I was proud of myself is an understatement, I felt like a web scraping hero. The second project involved creating a dashboard for monitoring COVID-related data for Pennsylvania from March 2020 to June 2021.I had fun learning how to create the dashboard. I look forward to updating it with more features. Well, the good news is, I aced the project and I eventually got my long awaited certificate. This is only the beginning of greater feats for me in Data Science.