“If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.” This well-known African proverb could perfectly summarize my Bootcamp experience as we inch towards the end of this edition of the IE Data Science Bootcamp. 

There is just one week to go until our Demo Day, where we will present our Capstone project. It’s hard to believe this journey only began in mid-September with a deep dive into statistics and programming, which stirred up a good deal of fireworks in my head after some years where both subjects were comfortably stowed in a mental drawer. And so the “going fast alone” part began.

What’s most exciting is, of course, the intensity of six-to-ten hours of classes per day in many disciplines, and then getting down to the business of putting the new knowledge to immediate practical use. What stands out is how focused all our professors are on ensuring that we understand the application of data science techniques in the real business world. Nothing stays theoretical for long, so every day I get to be pragmatic yet rigorous in my calculations, analysis and insights.

While the final goal in the Bootcamp and the Capstone project is to make machine learning (ML) models, it feels no less important to get a fundamental grasp of the underlying data and be able to clean and prepare it. After all, models are not very forgiving of bad assumptions or of poorly treated data. Every single day I get to deal with the reality of a data scientist’s life and the huge variety of challenges I’ve encountered have made me a better practitioner. Indeed, I’m amazed at how quickly I have made it part of my normal routine and workflow.

Nevertheless, in a surprise twist, two of the units which both my camp-mates and I have come to enjoy best are also the ones that are more focused on soft skills: storytelling and resilience.

This could be because they are a welcome break from the more traditional disciplines and help us build confidence and teamwork skills in a safe environment. Total strangers just a few weeks ago, our group has become a cohesive data science machine, capable of building a full Capstone project from the ground up. We have indeed “gone far, together.”

Turning to the Capstone project… From a conceptual presentation by our client to a framework for development, all the way to our final models and the upcoming presentation on Demo Day, it’s been both frustrating and exciting. On occasions it’s felt like everything is inscrutable, and other times you feel like shouting “eureka!” 

After more than one or two long nights and weekends of analysis, preparation and interpretation, everyone on the team has made excellent contributions both within their comfort zones and outside them. We question everything we know, and plenty that we do not know, until we find our solutions.

Then we get to test these solutions against the judgment of our client and our professors. Sometimes we find we must iterate this process over and over again or dig deeper. So we get right back to it, with a few more bits (or is it bytes?) of experience on our balance sheet, our initial excitement intact, as we reach closer to the Demo Day presentation. Such is the essence of teamwork. Thank you, Andrea, Merve, Eduardo and Max!