How to make career into Data Science

Hello, Guys!! Recently I have been asked by many people that what they should do to make a career in data science field.
The first requisite is that you should have the fire in your belly to make into this field. Believe me, there is no dearth of jobs.There are jobs out there you should be willing to be employable.
Data science is a field where industry heavily rely on logical and analytical capability.I am mentioning some things which are least requirement to make into this field.You should be good in basics first.I am mentioning below how to become a data scientist for free.I have also got chance to interview people for my firm. While interviewing, some people have experience of 1 year working in analytics field but they don’t know basics.There was one person who has done Msc in statistics but he did not know basics of statistics like p-value.These are some of the practices which I have followed to get into this field.Analyticsvidhya blog is highly recommended blog for beginners.You would find everything else there which I didn’t write in this post.

1.Solve puzzles/brain teasers/speed maths calculations.
2.Enroll in MOOCs courses from Coursera/Edx/Udacity.I am mentioning courses which should be taken and start from option a from every course mentioned below.After completing a part, you can move to option b.If you have to pick only one course then choose AnalyticsEdge in Edx.

For Statistics
(Note: Statistics is an important part of Data Science. You should know at least Basics of Statistics i.e. concepts of probability, Normal Distribution, standard deviation, p-values, correlation, and causation etc)
a. Data analysis and Statistical Inference on Coursera.
b. Intro to Descriptive and Inferential Statistics.

For R

a.The analyticsEdge from MIT in Edx is one of the best course to get you started in theĀ  power of analyticsEdge.This course is time taking and very rigorous.You should be able to spend 15-20 hours per week.Kindly do assignments they provide otherwise it will be of no use.If they have taken offline their assignment, google their assignment you will find it.(I finished it 100%)
b.DataCamp

For Python
a.Datacamp launched their python for data science course.Do take it
b.Dataquest is also one of the good resources.

For SAS
a.Data Analysis and Interpretation.This is also available python.

For Machine Learning
a. The famous Machine learning by Andrew Ng on Coursera

For Predictive analytics
a.Predictive analytics from IIMB on Edx

3. Start reading one blog every day from Analyticsvidhya(Heavily recommended for beginners), Data Science central and kdnuggets.
4.Participate in competitions on Kaggle/Analyticsvidhya
a.Titanic is a good and very easy problem on data science to get you started.You would find various tutorials for this problem.Just google it.
5.Start thinking in numbers and solve some case studies from consulting
6.Be good in maths.
7.Learn Linear regression, Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest algorithms in depth.In industry Logistic regression is the widely used algorithm.

For Interview
Make a good resume
Prepare on some famous logical puzzles
Guesstimate questions like how many cigarette are being sold in one month.
Work on your problem-solving structure.Interviewer checks your approach to solving tough problems, not your solution.
Research about company

Keep applying and show your passion for this field.
You know skills are cheap but passion is priceless. I read daily about data science like news paper.Don’t be fascinated by news of sexiest job title.It is a demanding job.If you don’t have it in you, you won’t survive in this field.

Update : You must read Monica Rogati’s advice too. Here is the link.

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-become-a-data-scientist-1/answer/Monica-Rogati

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