How do I get started with data science?

Hi everyone, I want to get started with data science and gradually advance to expert levels. I am not sure where to begin and would appreciate guidance from the community on how I can start and progress in data science.

As a start, I suggest focusing on these areas:

Statistics:

  • Probability (distributions, basic manipulations)
  • Statistical summaries (univariate and bivariate)
  • Hypothesis testing and confidence intervals
  • Linear regression

Linear Algebra:

  • Basics of arranging data in vectors and matrices
  • Operators (matrix multiplication, etc.)

Calculus:

  • Limits
  • Basic differentiation and integration (especially polynomials)

Information Theory (Discrete):

  • Entropy, joint entropy, conditional entropy, mutual information

For statistics, I recommend:

‘Practice of Business Statistics’ by David S. Moore, George P. McCabe, William M. Duckworth, and Stanley L. Sclove (ISBN-13: 978-0716757238)

For machine learning, check out these books:

‘Computer Systems That Learn’ by Weiss and Kulikowski (ISBN-13: 978-1558600652)

‘Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques’ by Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, Mark A. Hall, and Christopher J. Pal (4th edition, 2016, ISBN-13: 978-0128042915). Older editions are fine and usually less expensive.

@Vern
These recommendations look helpful. I will check out the machine learning books.

@Vern
Thank you for sharing these resources.

Are you comfortable with Python? You don’t have to be, as a lot of data science is also done in R or MatLab, but Python is the most used these days. If not, that might be a good place to start. If you are, there are plenty of self-learning options with books and online courses.

One of my favorites is ‘Data Science from Scratch’ (O’Reilly), which has great online resources you can follow along with on GitHub. If you’re interested in data science careers or leveling up, you could check out the Data-Centric AI Community. They have sessions, like today’s on finding data science jobs, which could be helpful.

@Khai
Thanks for the suggestion. I am currently learning Python.