How you can learn Data Science in Nigeria?
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Data Science skill has seen an increase in the number of aspirants lately; this is due to the rising use of data in companies. Data is now the new energy that propels the outstanding performance of the latest technologies that uses artificial intelligence. The field is also increasingly becoming important as the need for studying trends in occurrences is needed to improve upon many things in this era of swift technologies. Openings and salaries for Data Scientist are expected to even skyrocket the more in a few years’ time. Seeing these opportunities, many are now specializing in data science, but it is important someone is not carried away by these juicy offers.
So where do you start from to be successful at learning data science?
1. You must have a love for data preferably way back before now. Do you enjoy reading reports in figures and graphs? Did you enjoy how you worked on data as part of your academic journey or towards your academic qualification? You might not be well grounded then, but these are indicators that you might find data science interesting and luckily find it as your career path.
2. Second, you need to love computing and be ready to dive into it and feel like exploring writing codes because most statistical data science operations are now been done by programming or written codes or algorithms. You will need to defeat the fear for programming to successfully learn data science and succeed as a data scientist.
3. Data science will also make you inquisitive about generating hidden information in data for public view or understanding. You will need to develop an appetite for finding data sources or collecting data and applying various data science tools to clean, manipulate, analyze and visualize the data for public consumption. Most people only appreciate data when it has been visualized and interpreted for an average person to understand.
4. While learning data science it is also important you aim high by building a portfolio of your work or practice. There are several online platforms to get you started such as Build software better, together (Build software better, together)
5. Lastly, you may need to do a crash course on basic statistics at least to be familiar with some statistical terms.
So what are the trending and foundational skills you should aim to start your journey into becoming a data scientist? Check the list below:
1. Learn data analysis soft wares like IBM SPSS and STATA. This will give you the foundation to flow into trending data science tools especially statistical programming languages.
2. Next, go for statistical programming languages like R and Python. These two are the most important in data science field. You will need to start from basics and learn upward with many resources and communities to aid your learning online like Build software better, together (Build software better, together), Your Home for Data Science
3. Learn Tableau and Microsoft Power BI. These tools will also aid you in data visualization for public consumption.
4. Learn the fundamentals of Machine learning algorithms and Artificial intelligence.
Now here is a list of data science communities or consulting firms where you can intern or learn Data Science in Nigeria:
1. Recently, Nigeria now has a growing data science community that you can join here: Data Science Nigeria is leading Nigeria’s Artificial intelligence, Big Data…
2. DataLab Nigeria is also a data science consulting firm with opportunities for internship and training in data science tools.
Good Luck!!