Big Data and Data Science are hot buzzwords right now. The buzzwords might go away but the ideas will not. This talk will explain the buzzwords, and it will cover some of the best resources for attaining data science skills.

1. Why Data Science is
Something You Should
Care About
Presented @ South Dakota Code Camp 2012
Ryan Swanstrom @swgoof

2. About Ryan Swanstrom
Find me on the web
http://twitter.com/swgoof
http://linkedin.com/in/ryanswanstrom
http://datascience101.wordpress.com/

3. Data Science
"[ability to] obtain, scrub, explore, model and
interpret data, blending hacking, statistics, and
machine learning."
definition by Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist @ Bit.ly

4. Data Science
http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2378

5. Who is a data scientist?
http://onforb.es/WNLnRu

6. Big Data
Any dataset where the size or speed of
incoming data causes difficulties in processing
● Volume
● Velocity
● Variety

7. Hadoop
"[...] a framework that allows for the distributed
processing of large data sets across clusters of
computers using simple programming models."
Apache Hadoop Website
● HDFS - Hadoop Distributed File System
● MapReduce

8. Lots of Data
18 Months
the amount of time for digital data to double

9. Data Products

10. Why Do You Care?
McKinsey Global Big Data Report
● 140k - 190k Unfilled Jobs by 2018
● 1.5M Managers & Analysts

11. Indeed Data Science Job Listings
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Data-science&relative=1

12. Now That You Care, What Skills?
1. Machine Learning
2. Statistics
3. Story Telling (Communication)
4. Big Data
5. Algorithms
6. Curiosity

13. College and University
http://datascience101.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/colleges-with-data-science-degrees/
http://whatsthebigdata.com/2012/08/09/graduate-programs-in-big-data-and-data-science/

14. College and University
Pros Cons
● Credentials ● Expensive
● Experts ● Not Individualized
● Familiar ● School
● Widely Accepted ● Lengthy
● Structured ● Inflexible
● Not Real World

15. Corporate Training
General Assembly - Not really Corp Training,
but it looks really good

16. Corporate Training
Pros Cons
● Short Timeframe ● Expensive
● Experts ● Not Individualized
● Certificates ● Product Focused
● Business-Savy ● Sales Pitch
● Real World
● Structured

17. MOOCs (Massive Open Online
Courses)

18. MOOCs (Massive Open Online
Courses)
Pros Cons
● Free ● No Credentials
● Experts ● Single Course
● Flexible ● No Programs (Yet)

19. Blogs/Wikis/Other

20. Blogs/Wikis/Other
Pros Cons
● Free ● Quality?
● Very Specific ● No Credentials
● Short ● No Structure
● Lots of them ● Too many!

21. Blogs/Wikis/Other
The Problem
● What content is good?
● What order should I cover the content?
● Where do I find new content?
● Who can help me understand?

22. Data Science 201 - coming soon
http://www.datascience201.com
Helping you find the best
data science learning content!
Thank You