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Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

news.berkeley.edu

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Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#11

Post by resolaibohp »

oculusthrift wrote: post #9
ithilglin909 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just curious -- where do you think the puck will be? I've had a number of younger acquaintances ask for career advice. Pursuing some kind of data science seems like an obviously smart direction now, but I've wondered if this, as well as traditional CS career paths, may be in danger of becoming over-saturated areas, now that everyone views them as sure paths to a job that pays well.

i think there is a natural barrier for these paths being too hard and too mathy for most people. people have known for decades that engineering is a good path.

Yep, a lot of the people who want to get into it run away when they find out you need to know how to code and understand the math. For some reason there is this idea that it is easy money.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#12

Post by electricslpnsld »

jamestimmins wrote: post #5

I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects, which superficially seem to cover the same material, and relatively few courses covering more traditional CS topics such as computer systems, networks, OS. I suppose it has to do with the market, but also feels like colleges are skating to where the puck is, rather than where it will be (or perhaps, where it could be).

> I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects

Is it that there are more courses in data science relative to other topics, or is just more marketing around these classes? It costs Berekely essentially nothing to pump out some press around the release of course materials in data science.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#14

Post by qntty »

seycombi wrote: post #2

direct link: https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/berkeleyx-found... (There are two ways you can follow the course: Certificate Program is paid, but the AUDIT program is free)

Note that if you don't want to pay, you should click "View Courses" and click on 1 of the 3 courses in the Foundations of Data Science series.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#15

Post by linuxftw »

resolaibohp wrote: post #10
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects, which superficially seem to cover the same material, and relatively few courses covering more traditional CS topics such as computer systems, networks, OS. I suppose it has to do with the market, but also feels like colleges are skating to where the puck is, rather than where it will be (or perhaps, where it could be).

I have also found this interesting. What I don't understand is that the amount of data science jobs are no where near the levels that people make it seem. I am not sure where all these people will end up working if they want to be a data scientist. There is not a need to hire huge teams of data scientists like you might for dev roles, it doesn't scale the same way.

Every graduate that doesn't find a high paying job in the field is an excellent candidate for the next level of education.

After you have given a university hundreds of thousands of dollars and a decade-plus of your life, you will then be ready to teach the next crop of students.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#16

Post by jamestimmins »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #7
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects, which superficially seem to cover the same material, and relatively few courses covering more traditional CS topics such as computer systems, networks, OS. I suppose it has to do with the market, but also feels like colleges are skating to where the puck is, rather than where it will be (or perhaps, where it could be).

I'm just curious -- where do you think the puck will be? I've had a number of younger acquaintances ask for career advice. Pursuing some kind of data science seems like an obviously smart direction now, but I've wondered if this, as well as traditional CS career paths, may be in danger of becoming over-saturated areas, now that everyone views them as sure paths to a job that pays well.

I simply mean in terms of the availability of online courses. Eventually there will be harder CS courses online. While there's been enormous movement in this direction in even the last 2 years, there's still a lot of room for growth and improvement.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#18

Post by barry-cotter »

analognoise wrote: post #17
csjr wrote: post #13

Does anyone know how it compares to bootcamps like DataCamp[0] for e.g? [0] https://www.datacamp.com

Boot camps are stupid. Go to community college. It's ridiculously cheap, and the credits are worth something.

If you can learn skills that get you a job from a boot camp they’re not stupid. The fact that Lambda School and App Academy don’t get paid unless you get a job and they still exist suggests rather strongly that they get people jobs.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#20

Post by zitterbewegung »

jamestimmins wrote: post #5

I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects, which superficially seem to cover the same material, and relatively few courses covering more traditional CS topics such as computer systems, networks, OS. I suppose it has to do with the market, but also feels like colleges are skating to where the puck is, rather than where it will be (or perhaps, where it could be).

MIT open courseware has a bunch of classes related to traditional CS topics. Also just searching universities you can find some. Data Science is the new hip class and it’s just very aggressively marketed. The other one being marketed heavily is intro to coding .
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