Maths. Stats. Python. R. Exam.  Visualization. Mean. Bias. Max. Dataset.  Correlation.  Pandas. Tidyverse. Regression. Capstone Project. Datatable. Numpy. More R. Machine Learning. More Maths. More Stats… This has been my life’s rhythm for the last 6 weeks, and now I think I understand how is the engine behind those fancy words as Machine learning or Artificial intelligence. 

I am Beatriz, one of the Spanish students of this third international Data Science Bootcamp. I am an engineer eager for new challenges, amazed of the power of data to improve any kind of business I decided to join this program and just after 6 weeks it will never come to my mind the image of a group on black and white bears eating green Bamboo whenever I heard the word Pandas.

Now we have covered half of the course and although it has been only 6 weeks it seems that we have been here for 6 months. The intensity and immersion of the program is exhausting but worthy as the knowledge is coming into our brains.

This week has been short but challenging, it started with a long-winded Python exam. Then on Wednesday the struggling math and stats final exam, after 3 hours analyzing normality, linearity and computing regression models we ended this subject that builds the base of machine learning methods. After this exercise we had a resilience break guided by the patient Rodrigo, 15 minutes of meditation that made me feel as if I had just woken up again in the morning. The rest of the timetable has been filled by a lot of Machine learning with R and nice data visualization with Python.

We have had also time for some leisure, on Thursday, we have celebrated Indian’s New Year thanks to our Indian colleague Vish, who brought some tasty typical sweets to share with us, so I could find out more about how are this festivities in his country.

Then we had the engaging visit of Monica Villas from IBM, who changed our perspective of that company giving us a wide and useful vision of what does this corporation with Data Science and which innovative tools they have, as Watson, a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.

The week never ends as I have to work with my group in our Iberia Capstone Project during the weekend. Now as we are learning different Machine learning models it is time to play with them with real data of customers and flights!

The weeks run fast but now I have an arising feeling of that those first messy pieces of the puzzle are shaping  in a great picture.