Being a prolific ‘Google Analytics Investigator’ and lover of everything data I was thrilled to find out that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Analytics Edge course is free and open to attend online. The course covers a lot from linear and logistic regression to k-means clustering and integer optimisation whilst teaching you how to use R, a simple but massively powerful language.

This was definitely much much deeper than I have ever dipped my foot into the field of statistics since my Advanced Economics classes back in secondary school. I have analysed crime data, predicted wine prices and gained insight into airline ticket pricing and even found a tumor on a MRI scan through hierarchical clustering. The entire course was a fascinating glimpse into Big Data and its incredible power to help us learn and evolve.

Predictive Diagnosis: Discovering patterns for disease detection

Takeaway

• R skills
• Deeper knowledge of Statistics

Conclusion

I will keep Data Science as a hobby but I will probably (definitely) not end up working in Machine Learning.

Until then

The journalist-engineers at The Pudding are doing some fascinating stuff that’s worth a look and are a source of motivation. It’s a wonderful mash of thorough research, data science, scrollytelling with JS/Python/R and stunning data visualisation. The below interactive visual is from their article on Seeing Earth from Outer Space.