Progress
Here’s the list I made in December 2020 for what I wanted to get done. Time to check in and see what I did.
- For now, I’ve taken the RedOwl Jekyll theme but eventually I’ll need to make it my own. I want this page to be my own by the end of the year!
- Finish out the Data Analyst track of DataQuest
- Explore both the Data Scientist and Data Engineer Tracks in DataQuest
- Complete my first (real) Kaggle competition
- Post here once a week, as of 1/1/2021
I have started to modify my page theme but have by no means finished. This one is definitely still a WIP.
Finishing out the Data Analyst track and exploring both the Data Scientist and Data Engineer tracks are, honestly quite obviously, not done. I had no expectation of finishing those out. I did however, finish the new SQL Skills Path that DateQuest recently released. I felt I needed to solidify my SQL skills and practice them some more so I took a step to the side and went through and completed that path and I definitely feel like I have a more solid understanding of basic SQL.
I am proud to say that I did complete my first Kaggle competition. Some may argue that it was not “real” since it was the tutorial, but po-tay-to po-ta-to. It was the Titanic - Machine Learning From Disater project which is laid out well to introduce you both to the Kaggle platform and to the tutorials and help that the site offers. I was able to successfully build a model to predict out would live and die given a dataset of passengers on the Titanic. A bit morbid but oddly interesting at the same time! I was also able to learn a bit about underfitting and overfitting models to get the best prediction as well as how to build a random forest model using scikit-learn. Kaggle is definitely a space I want to explore more. I believe it’s a great way to find interesting datasets to analyze as well as a great resource to see different methodologies for approaching those datasets through how others uses have analyzed them.
I have failed to post once a week as of the start of 2021. I guess I should just give up now? I’m a failure…
Of course not! The real purpose of the weekly posts was to keep myself accountable. If instead of posting once a week I complete a challenge, learn about a new library or reimagine my entire website, I count that as a win.
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
Swimming on - time to set some more goals!
Let’s move forward a couple as-is first:
- Finish out the Data Analyst track of DataQuest
- Explore both the Data Scientist and Data Engineer Tracks in DataQuest
Next, let’s move forward and modify a couple more:
- Find my own emmyoop Jekyll theme to make my site my own by the end of the month
- Find another Kaggle competition to compete in and get set up to start it
And a more concrete/attainable/short term goal:
- Finish the SQL course for Data Analysts in DataQuest by the end of the month
Finally, let’s organize those goals!
Short Term for February 2021
- Find and implement my own website theme
- Finish the SQL for Data Analysts
- Find and get set up for another Kaggle competition
Long Term for Spring 2021
- Finish out the Data Analyst track of DataQuest
- Explore both the Data Scientist and Data Engineer Tracks in DataQuest
