First Data Science project
Hi everyone! I wanted to start off by introducing myself and telling you guys a little bit about myself before diving into the rest of the blog, which explain my thoughts on the project and the first 4 weeks of this bootcamp. As you already know, my name is Deric Williamson. I am 27 years old and currently living in a small town near Springfield, Missouri with my wife and two dogs. We just celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary last weeks but have been together almost 11. When I’m not working our studying I really enjoy doing anything in the outdoors. Some of these hobbies include backpacking, hiking, kayaking, fishing and hunting with my dad when I am able. I’ve always enjoyed being outside here in the mid-west, especially when the weather is right for it.
Out of high school, I received a general education associates degree here in Springfield and transferred to Missouri State University for software engineering. On my downtown I did a lot of studying different coding languages and practices what I could on my own. After a semester there, life threw us a few curve balls and I decided not to continue on with my bachelors degree at that time. That is when I stated looking into a bootcamp to attend. I enjoy the fast paced, completely hands on/project oriented aspect of a bootcamp and know that I will benefit greatly from this experience.
With that being said, My first Data Science project from Flatiron School boot camp was a huge learning curve on multiple different topics.
GitHub is a version control that allows the contributors of the project “branch” out the code and edit anything without changing anything in the original files. GitHub is also the industry standard in dealing with code. Although GitHub is simple, it can be intimidating to those who are new to the platform. It was quite a stumble for my partner and I when we ran into our first merging conflict. Luckily from this project, I’ve learned a lot about branching, merging, pushing, when to pull, and yes, how to deal with merging conflicts.
Luckily, prior to joining this boot-camp, I was comfortable with the fundamentals of python. If I ran into a python related problem, it didn’t take much time to figure out. However getting into the libraries was a different story. Studying up on data frames in “pandas”(my favorite part) was strait forward and every problem I ran into, I was able to figure it out and moved on with confidence. Lastly, the library “matplotlib” gave me a lot of troubles setting up, manipulating, and just plainly making it look good. I spent so much time on the graphs that I felt like I couldn’t move on to a more visual appealing library like “seaborn”. My next goal in my learning career here at Flatiron is to study up more on both “matplotlib” and “seaborn”.
With all of that being said, creating both the readme.md and powerpoint presentation to go with our code was fairly straightforward. I am super excited to talk about my code to the teacher in the project review. I’m also nervous sharing the PowerPoint to classmates. I have not had a lot of practice doing a stand up verbal presentation and this project, and hopefully other projects in the future, gives me the opportunity to practice before I set out on my own in a professional setting.
Anyways, I wouldn’t say that I conquered all of the learning curves mentioned above but I would say I did come out on top facing them. I have learned so much in only four weeks time at Flatiron School. I can’t wait to see what is waiting for us around the corner and find out what all I am capable of in the near future.
