About This Class

Data Scientists enjoy one of the top-paying jobs, with an average salary of $120,000 according to Glassdoor and Indeed. That's just the average! And it's not just about money - it's interesting work too!

If you've got some programming or scripting experience, this course will teach you the techniques used by real data scientists in the tech industry - and prepare you for a move into this hot career path. This comprehensive course includes 68 lectures spanning almost 9 hours of video, and most topics include hands-on Python code examples you can use for reference and for practice. I’ll draw on my 9 years of experience at Amazon and IMDb to guide you through what matters, and what doesn’t.

Each concept is introduced in plain English, avoiding confusing mathematical notation and jargon. It’s then demonstrated using Python code you can experiment with and build upon, along with notes you can keep for future reference. You won't find academic, deeply mathematical coverage of these algorithms in this course - the focus is on practical understanding and application of them.

The topics in this course come from an analysis of real requirements in data scientist job listings from the biggest tech employers. We'll cover the machine learning and data mining techniques real employers are looking for, including:

Regression analysis

K-Means Clustering

Principal Component Analysis

Train/Test and cross validation

Bayesian Methods

Decision Trees and Random Forests

Multivariate Regression

Multi-Level Models

Support Vector Machines

Reinforcement Learning

Collaborative Filtering

K-Nearest Neighbor

Bias/Variance Tradeoff

Ensemble Learning

Term Frequency / Inverse Document Frequency

Experimental Design and A/B Tests

...and much more! There's also an entire section on machine learning with Apache Spark, which lets you scale up these techniques to "big data" analyzed on a computing cluster.

If you're new to Python, don't worry - the course starts with a crash course. If you've done some programming before, you should pick it up quickly. This course shows you how to get set up on Microsoft Windows-based PC's; the sample code will also run on MacOS or Linux desktop systems, but I can't provide OS-specific support for them.

If you’re a programmer looking to switch into an exciting new career track, or a data analyst looking to make the transition into the tech industry – this course will teach you the basic techniques used by real-world industry data scientists. I think you'll enjoy it!