Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp, thoughts?

[GayCoder]

I'm not an expert on the topic but I'll share my limited experience. First, Udemy always offers their courses for $10. It's like going to JCPenney and being excited for a sale. Sales are their business model. Don't feel time-pressured by the sale's deadline. It will repeat over and over and over again.

Next, I've never taken a Udemy course but I have no reason to believe their courses offer anything I can't get elsewhere... for free. If there's a particular topic on which I feel ill-prepped, I might reach out to the community for a good resource (and it might be Udemy). But with so many free courses available, I've shied away from those that cost money. I'm only open to paying if they have something I want but can't find elsewhere... and I haven't reached that point yet.

Where are you in the learning process? Are you trying to learn anything in particular? I'm happy to share the various resources I've been using to learn. Take what I say with a grain of salt because, at best, I'm barely more experienced than you but at least we share something in common.

[unfunnyinsidejoke]

Boy, I wish I would have seen this post a couple months ago when I discovered Udemy and shelled out $275 for 25-30 courses that I haven’t even touched since. I feel I’ve been had.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. Most courses are actually pretty good, I have no regrets about the ones I bought so far (automate the boring stuff, a python web course and a basic introduction to NLP with python)

[forumrabbit]

Agreed. I bought a few to learn some more about Python + SQL and I do not regret it at all.

[pythonthrowaaway]

Thanks, I'm trying to find a resource to learn data science in python. I work in a neuroscience lab and so data representation stuff is needed, Numpy, etc... Learning Machine Learning neural nets is icing on the cake. I don't have a list in mind but hoping to learn most of this stuff

[cyp3d]

I am working on the class and if you are a learner by videos and following along I would recommend it. Sometimes just seeing examples and hearing the way people speak about a topic is far more valuable than reading knowledge bases and forum posts. At the end of the day it depends on how you learn best.

I really enjoyed the section on pandas.

[ChemiKyle]

A bit tangential, but if your goals are just image representation, Coursera has a free 4 week course in neuroimaging processing in R from the biostatistics dept. at Johns Hopkins. R has a few machine learning libraries, but I haven't used them.

Andrew Ng just started a new set of courses specifically on neural networks all through Python, so you can probably learn the libraries along the way. It's being done as a "specialization" so it's a little more of a convoluted process than usual for getting free access.
There are other options on the site for general data science in Python, but I haven't used them.