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I attended the first GA Data Science course to be offered in the DC area in the spring of 2014. Back then, the course was 3 months long, two nights a week, fro

by JPKab 11y ago

I attended the first GA Data Science course to be offered in the DC area in the spring of 2014. Back then, the course was 3 months long, two nights a week, from 7PM to 10PM on Tuesday and Thursday nights. The first part was all R, and the second part was all Python (Scikit learn, etc). I got a lot out of it, but it was a TON of work. Outside of class, I was spending 2 - 3 hours a night doing homework. The teacher was great, and he made extensive use of Git for all assignments. Homework was submitted via commits to a class repo. Other students who came into the course got less out of it, mainly because they didn't have ANY background in programming, or because they simply didn't put in the work. Overall, I think it was awesome for me, but it's like anything else: You get out of it what you put into it. Edit: I just noticed the repo was created by Kevin Markham! He was in my class, and the dude is friggin brilliant!

derekdahmer 11y ago
This is exactly my experience too with the GA NYC class. The classes were a great overview of the different tools a Data Scientist has in their toolbox but the real learning came from homework projects.
dataschool 11y ago
JPKab/John! Hilarious to cross paths with you again in the Hacker News comments :) Your compliment is appreciated, but you are way too generous! So, after taking the first session of the course in DC (internally called "DAT1"), I was a TA for DAT2, the co-instructor for DAT3 and DAT4 and DAT5, and the solo instructor for DAT7 and DAT8. The repo linked above was my repo for DAT8. The curriculum evolved quite a bit since you took the course. One major change is that by DAT3, we had moved to Python only. We had an increasing number of students without a programming background, which was one of the reasons for the shift to a one-language course. And I totally agree: Students get out of it what they put into it.

by JPKab 11y ago

derekdahmer 11y ago

This is exactly my experience too with the GA NYC class. The classes were a great overview of the different tools a Data Scientist has in their toolbox but the real learning came from homework projects.

dataschool 11y ago

JPKab/John! Hilarious to cross paths with you again in the Hacker News comments :) Your compliment is appreciated, but you are way too generous! So, after taking the first session of the course in DC (internally called "DAT1"), I was a TA for DAT2, the co-instructor for DAT3 and DAT4 and DAT5, and the solo instructor for DAT7 and DAT8. The repo linked above was my repo for DAT8. The curriculum evolved quite a bit since you took the course. One major change is that by DAT3, we had moved to Python only. We had an increasing number of students without a programming background, which was one of the reasons for the shift to a one-language course. And I totally agree: Students get out of it what they put into it.