LE VOYAGE: Data Science
SCA Mentorship Program — Month 1
Why do we go to school? “well, some would say, hmmmmnn….to acquire knowledge and become a great person in life”, that true.
“Education is not just about going to school and a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life”- Shakuntala Devi
Schooling brings about learning, knowledge, experience in a field of expertise, but can be likened to mentoring in a more diverse way. This is exactly what she Code Africa is Offering us on a plater of Gold through Mentoring Program. But permit me to say this is even more enlightening than schooling because of the numerous opportunities and exposure to the real-world scenario that school might not have been able to offer.
According to, John F Kennedy, he once said, “we must find time to stop and thank those people who make a difference in our lives.”
Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximize their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be.
She Code Africa, https://www.shecodeafrica.org gave me the platform to be part of the few chosen candidates to be mentored for 3 months in this emerging field of Data Science with exploring career path in this field, setting goals, developing contacts and also identifying and supplying resources.
A mentor with Excellent listening capabilities, flexible, knowledgeable, Nonjudgmental, able to network & find resources, honest &candid, likewise able to give constructive feedback in person of Kolawole Precious was given to me and this made this whole voyage easy and sweet. You can check through some of her wonderful projects in this field on http://precillieos.herokuapp.com/portfolio
Permit me to say, Data is the new find oil while technology is the gas, coming from a developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa, a country filled with milk and honey, great minds and youths filled with substance, energy and motivation to move Africa to the next level.
The great Economist, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, once said in a Ted talk that “Africa needs to create more jobs to pull out of poverty”. The current youths in Africa will stop at nothing to move Africa to limelight especially through the Tech-Industry. Despite the zeal by numerous youths to contribute towards the economic growth in Africa, availability of resources tends to be limited and this has been a major setback for numerous youths.
Here, we have She Code Africa bridging the gap especially for the female gender, that is, even seen as less disadvantaged in the Tech-Industry. This milestone, being achieved by She Code Africa is highly commendable.
Starting my Data Science Journey without mentoring would have been haphazard and herculean, but the past One-month has been a roller coaster on this train. The availability of resources, links, opportunities, experiences is endless.
The week started off with a warm welcome address by the founder of She Code Africa in person of Ada Nduka (The Amazon). Then to the allocation of mentors and tenacious teammates. Below is the summary of Topics learnt and assignments given so far.
WEEK1: Introduction to Python Programming
Creating an account on Medium to publish our article, just like I will publish this after writing.
Data Types and Operations
Control Flows
Functions
WEEK2: Fundamentals of Mathematics for Data Science
Basics of mathematics in Data Science
Probability
Statistics
Here is a link to my published Article on that https://adedoyinsola.medium.com/a-beginners-level-guide-to-statistics-and-probability-for-newbies-in-data-science-3a1da2858431
WEEK3: Introduction to Python Libraries for Data Analysis
Data Analysis
Pandas
NumPy
Matplotlib
Seaborn
The Assignment given was a dataset from a lending company whereby we drew inference and wrote a report on, here is the link to my GitHub repository https://github.com/tadedoyinsola/SCA-MP-C4-ASSESSMENTS/blob/main/revised.ipynb
WEEK4:
Data Wrangling
Summary
Each week has its own peculiarities and challenges, but there is always something new to learn. Transitioning career path from a non-tech field into a field involving coding, debugging codes and also solving problems in one’s area of expertise couldn’t have been an easy journey without this wonderful program filled with opportunities in the real world.
Week2 was quite challenging for me, but at the end, I discovered I can’t be an outstanding data scientist without the application of basic mathematics such as Statistics and Probability likewise, week3 was equally quite challenging with back aches and swollen eyes. The datasets given was merged and I was exposed more to the broadness of pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib etc. In a nutshell, the deeper we go, the more challenging it becomes but the stronger, bolder and better I become.
Conclusively, I can’t thank She Code Africa enough for this beautiful opportunity as I look forward to learning more from the coming months. Applying for this program was one of the best decisions I made this year.
Feel free to connect me on Twitter: @VivianDoyinsola
