How to learn Data Science & Machine learning?

During this surreal time, we found ourselves with some more time in our hands if some of us are placed into furlough, or simply working from home, we can use this new time, that I will call now QuaranTIME for this article, to learn new skills and to improve our existing skills.

So I have decided to help out anyone interested in learning about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science, in general, some of the best resources I found helpful in my journey on these topics.

Learning a new skill, concept or subject is not at all easy, and requires some discipline to make sure there is progress, a lot of people hit that brick wall when things start to get a bit more complex and tend to give up, usually due to time pressure, work creeping up into personal time, or responsibilities that take all of their time.

So my advice is, have the time allocated for learning, at least one hour a day, maybe more if you can, split your quaranTIME in a smart way and you will see results quickly, personally I find that early morning, while I am having my coffee, is when I am the most receptive to new ideas, concepts, and the house is silent and still…. Is bliss.

You will see there are an enormous amount of learning resources to choose from, books, courses, videos, etc. But remember that you will need complementary skills, such as python programming, R programming, data visualisation and statistics. This is a common mistake that people make when they dive into a subject without having the necessary foundation, they get overwhelmed and give up. This will not happen to you, you will do this the smart way. In the next section, I present some resources from beginners to advanced in Data Science, Machine Learning, Python, R and Artificial Intelligence, as they are all related it is important to compliment each with the other.

Data science is a “concept to unify statistics, data analysis, machine learning and their related methods” in order to “understand and analyse actual phenomena” with data. It uses techniques and theories drawn from many fields within the context of mathematics, statistics, computer science, and information science.

With this in mind, I selected a few books and online courses to help you start learning about Data Science.

These books are available now for free from Springer, or GitHub during this QuaranTIME, Springer decided to create a COVID–19 pack with a lot of usually expensive books for free! It is a great opportunity to start.