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Many beginners and students often ask me how to start in data science and which platforms or tools to use. I always recommend beginning with Kaggle and taking free courses on YouTube. Once you’re comfortable, learn through tutorials and blogs, contribute to open-source projects on GitHub, and share your journey on Medium and LinkedIn. The platforms mentioned in this blog are essential for launching a data science career.
1. Kaggle
Kaggle is a data science and machine learning platform that offers various features. It includes courses, competitions, datasets, models, and notebooks. You can even run your own code through the browser and access free GPUs and TPUs.
I love this platform and have been using it since I was a beginner in data science. It helped me understand how each tool and algorithm works and how to create really good analytical reports. I highly recommend beginners sign up for it and start exploring its various free features.
2. GitHub
GitHub is a code hosting and team collaboration platform. You can use it to host your data, build and deploy free websites, access CI/CD tools, and manage your code. You can also push machine learning models, metadata, and datasets to repositories. It’s a great community-driven website that hiring managers and recruiters notice. Many people have checked out my Kaggle and GitHub profiles before reaching out to me for job proposals or project collaborations.
3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is great for finding jobs and connecting with like-minded people. But most importantly, it can be used as a communication and professional networking website. You can share what you learn, and people will follow you. It will help you build a brand that will open highly lucrative opportunities. Just be active on the platform and keep engaging with people. Apart from social media interaction, you can also follow data science and machine learning communities that will help you learn new resources and tools and also stay updated with current content.
4. KDnuggets
KDnuggets is a treasure trove for data science and AI. It contains short tutorials, guides, blogs, and cheat sheets on all kinds of data science-related content, such as Python, SQL, data visualization, data analysis, machine learning, NLP, and more. Just bookmark this website and keep learning from experts and professionals in the field.
5. YouTube
YouTube is an educational powerhouse with an endless supply of free tutorials and lectures. Channels like Krish Naik, Ken Jee, and Alex The Analyst provide comprehensive tutorials on statistics, programming, and data analysis. Some channels also publish lectures from top universities like Stanford and MIT that can help you learn what top educators are teaching in data science. Sometimes, you only need YouTube tutorials to learn a concept or to build a proper data science project.
6. Hugging Face Hub
If you are interested in machine learning, natural language processing, and Generative AI, Hugging Face Hub provides a platform where you can share your models, datasets, AI applications, serve the model, interact with the community, and learn about new tools. Many top companies now share their machine learning models and datasets on Hugging Face. It is a truly free platform that can help you load, train, evaluate, and deploy the model, all using the same ecosystem. It is simple, and every machine learning engineer knows about it.
7. Medium
Medium has become a popular platform for data science professionals to share their insights, tutorials, and personal experiences. Popular publications like Towards Data Science, Towards AI, and ODSC – Open Data Science provide beginners access to a wide range of articles covering basic to advanced topics. I recommend sharing your learning on Medium and building a following around it. You can even get paid if you become popular. All you have to do is start writing, and over time you will get better at it.
Final Thoughts
Creating an account on the free platforms mentioned in this blog will provide you with the essential boost needed to learn data science and quickly integrate into this ever-growing field. Remember, the key to success is continuous learning, sharing your knowledge, and connecting with like-minded individuals. Embrace these opportunities and watch your data science journey unfold.
Abid Ali Awan (@1abidaliawan) is a certified data scientist professional who loves building machine learning models. Currently, he is focusing on content creation and writing technical blogs on machine learning and data science technologies. Abid holds a Master’s degree in technology management and a bachelor’s degree in telecommunication engineering. His vision is to build an AI product using a graph neural network for students struggling with mental illness.
