A Roller Coaster Ride With Data Science | by Mel Marques Fernandes

data science

These first weeks of IE Data Science Bootcamp have been like a roller coaster ride. On the first days, everyone was very happy introducing themselves, getting to know each other and finding their seating spot on the ‘open car’. We all knew it was going to be intense, yet no one was exactly sure of what to expect for the following days, there was an atmosphere of excitement just like when the ‘open cars’ start to climb the first steep slope of the ride.

Once we arrived at the top of the slope the first fall was quite smooth, the professors introduced us to R and Python and my feeling was that we were able to follow classes better than I had expected.

Then suddenly it all starts heating up and getting faster. Maria, our R professor, has the “fast mode” on and announces our first exam on the second week of class (What?!), that was our first triple twist on the ride. We still have not received the results, but it certainly got our heads shaking.

Luckily, the ride gets to that flat moment where you have a few seconds to recover from the twist and get yourself prepared for the next unexpected movement, it’s time for resilience class! Rodrigo, our professor, with his peaceful smile, inspirational talks, and meditation session is able to take us to a very enjoyable relaxation moment.

However, the ride is fast and things change very suddenly. The ‘open car’ approaches what I believe to be a very steep climb, we received the data from the companies for the capstone project and we have Python and R exams in the same week! We prepare ourselves for an exciting fall. Juan José, our Math professor, was very nice to move his exam to the following week and smooth the ride a little bit. Nonetheless, Pablo, our Python professor, with his very sweet smile kept his fame of preparing difficult exams, and that felt like a double loop on the ride.

Fortunately, we all survived the ride and were very glad to hear that we have already covered all the topics in R. We have certainly walked a long way this past 3 weeks and have learned a lot.

This week’s ride is about to end and we are all very eager to jump on the car again and start our next week’s ride.