A quick note to aspiring Data Science & Machine Learning practitioners-

I completed 14 years working in data science field this month. Many a time, aspirants ask me about learning path associated with data science.

I find there are two aspects to it. First is to learn the subject and second is practical experience. Later depends upon opportunity we get in our professional life. Former can be controlled and brightens the chances for later one. I will talk about former.

You may familiarize yourself with different ML algorithms and concepts by following online stuff but comprehending data science as a SUBJECT is very much required. When you learn a subject, you understand intuition behind origin, you understand evolution of concepts and their interrelationship and more importantly you get a larger view. Remember learning Physics in school days. You mature as subject matures.

So, I recommend first thing is to read a good book on ML. This may slightly take more time at beginning, but It would save lot of your later time to connect multiple dots around ML concepts. I share picture (on top) of first book around ML which I went through (in those days ‘Data Mining’ was more prevalent phrase).

Best wishes to all aspirants!