This evening, I attended my first class in iDA’s MOOC Pilot for Data Sciences & Analytics Training at the National Design Centre. I had first learnt of this pilot when I was considering a Masters in Business Analytics at NUS Business School and found out through Google that IDA was funding initiatives in Singapore to get people to pick up analytics.
Why was I even considering a Masters in B.A. in the first place?
Well, you might not know this, but I was actually a marketing analytics intern when I was at Mondelēz. Through the internship, I learnt how to be comfortable with data and how to reap actionable insights with data sets. This skill has continued to serve me well when I look at digital spends from my media agency or when I want to attribute drivers to a marketing campaign.
Since I already had the interest and knowledge, I thought I would just give the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) a try. It will be more economical than an actual Master’s degree, and would open me up to the data sciences community in Singapore, I thought.
The course is structured around the John Hopkin’s University Data Science specialisation on Coursera, with supplementary meet ups weekly to go through the course materials. The meet ups also serve as an avenue to socialise and form a data science community. IDA gives a 80% funding of the specialisation + a $500 incentive if I complete all 10 courses in the specialisation. Very attractive! Where else would someone PAY YOU to study?
The first session went well enough. The lecturer, Mr. Koo Ping Shung is super passionate about data sciences and couldn’t stop himself from talking about it. The energy of the class was great, and a broad overview of the usefulness of analytics and what analytics can be used for was covered.
It seems to me that the majority of demand for this field is still mainly coming from banks and the financial industry. Much reference was made to credit risk analysis and stock predictive modelling. Less said are fields such as digital analytics and marketing analytics in which I have had experience and vested interest in.
I guess we will touch more on these in days to come.
Personally, I’m eager to start coding in R and Python, just to see how it’s like. Will report more as I progress. In the meantime, do check out IDA’s website if you are interested in this course. I think they will definitely be organising a third cohort!
Image from INDESIGNLIVE
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