What I’m up to

I haven’t written here in a while because I haven’t “finished” anything I have been wanting to write about, but why wait until I’m completely done, right?

So, here’s a bit about what I’ve been up to data-science-wise:

• I’m in a grad class called Stochastic Models and we’re learning about Markov Chains right now. Fascinating stuff! Here’s a cool site that visually shows some Markov Chain concepts.
• My other grad class is Intro to Systems Engineering. (Yeah, because of the courses offered online, I’m taking the intro class in my second-to-last semester!) We just did a neat project in that class that involved coming up with a strategy and participating in a baseball draft, so I’ll come back later and write about that in more detail.
• I’m almost at the end of Udacity’s Cloudera Hadoop course. I am really enjoying learning about MapReduce, and will definitely write up a review of the class when I’m done. The biggest frustrations I’ve had so far haven’t involved the Hadoop concepts, but using the VM they provide has been frustrating! All I have left on that is the final project, so soon i’ll be able to cross that one off my goals list.
• Soon, I need to come up with a final project for my Systems Engineering Masters degree. I’m definitely doing something data science related, and will update when that plan is finalized.
• I’ve been telling more people about my data science plans, and have had more people asking me about data science and the learning process. I may be giving a talk to my alma mater’s IEEE Computer Society club meeting soon about “What is data science?”, so that will be fun!

Are you “becoming a data scientist”, too? What projects are you in the middle of right now?