The Never-Ending Story: Learning

I’ve been thinking to write some about my experiences before Data Science, in what field I was a teacher of, and what tough situations I had been in.

So here is my short story about what I’ve been doing before Data Science and how my Data Science journey began. Hang tight, you’re gonna be a little bit surprised!

Let’s start from the beginning of the story. The world was a cloud of gas and dust…….

Six years ago, I graduated from Marmara University, Department of Mathematics. But my interest in Math goes back to when I learned numbers and the multiplication table before learning reading and writing. Every adventure and road must have a beginning, isn’t it?
My favorite lesson during my university years was Topology. I can say that Topology improves my abstract thinking ability. In addition, the theory and proof studies I did enabled me to focus on the details of events and cause-effect relationships in all matters related to life.
After graduating, I could never break away from Math. So, I had been working as a Mathematics Teacher for two and half years. Teaching is one of the most important factors that make me who I am right now. Touching the lives of children with teaching Math​ have a peaceful and healing effect on human life.

While I was a teacher, I never stopped improving myself and acquiring new knowledge and skills. While working intensively for 6 days at the school, I was learning via online courses in the evenings and I was taking WingTsun lessons on Sundays. Wingtsun enabled me to use my energy properly with self-discipline and thus I was able to protect my energy without getting tired during busy working hours. And I also started learning to play the piano. Playing the piano was my childhood dream. You know, piano players know that using the right and left hands at the same time forces both lobes of the brain to work. In this way, I think it increases my concentration time as it provides coordination. I was an arts and crafts lover who used every holiday as an opportunity and followed her dreams.

I learned SQL and Python via online courses recommended by my brother I received. I would like to talk to you in more detail one day about SQL and Python, but the most important thing is that those courses increase my interest in Data Analysis. Everyone has breaking points in their lives and points that direct their destiny. Now I understand that those courses have also been the awareness that showed me the tendency to change my path.

And ta ta tamm.. This is one of my first codes when I started learning Python. No, don’t be afraid I don’t have 4000 years of history. I’m new in this world like you.

I quit my teaching career to contribute to my career development in the field of data. So I applied to a well-established company to work on Data Analysis. I never forget the day I went to the interview, dozens of migratory birds passed over me and I told myself that this is a sign to me, ​I should just be myself and never give up. I did that too. I can say to those who ask the most important factor in my being hired: my effort to improve myself with the online courses I attended and the fact that I am only myself in the interview.

I have now been working for this company as a Data Analyst for three years. Until now, I have worked with many business units, pondered on data and I was happy by producing meaningful outputs from the data. I’m familiar with data analysis, but what was the science of data? Data’s science is so cool. As a data lover, my interest in data science also increased, so I started reading articles in this area and started researching Kaggle projects.

Before continuing my data science adventure, are you ready for the quantum revolution? The amazing training workshop I attended was quantum programming. QBronze workshop by QTurkey explaining the fundamentals of quantum computing and quantum programming. In this tutorial, we worked on qubits with the python programming language. I used linear algebra while working on qubits during my studies. It was amazing. And later I became a member of this valuable organization.

I have friends that ask me how I can do these things concurrently. My brother is my mentor who helped me achieve balance and inspired and created awareness for me to improve myself in my life. He was the one who taught me that learning is a journey. He helped me find my way through our crafting program. This program is an individual program that we later called Craft&Brand program, which includes marketing yourself as a technology person and craftsmanship practices.

As you can imagine, as a result of my interest in data science, my main goal in our craft program with my brother was to be a Data Scientist. My brother recommended Vahit Keskin’s Data Science and Machine Learning bootcamp, which is the best training I can get to become a Data Scientist.

So, to be a Data Scientist, I participated in Vahit Keskin’s (and “Veri Bilimi Okulu”) Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp which enabled me to specialize in the field of Data Science. This Bootcamp, I started during the pandemic turned into an excellent opportunity where I worked in the day and created data science related projects at night.

Two months after starting Bootcamp, I joined the valuable “Veri Bilimi Okulu” organization as an Assistant Mentor. During this time, I  created/mentored many projects with more than 300 hours of lectures and found solutions to real business problems. Also, I did homework solutions and homework checks and we produced end-to-end projects with teamwork. In April, I completed the Bootcamp by receiving my certificate of achievement.  The fact that I have produced content with many different projects for the last 5 months shows that I am on the right track in my career by following my aim.

The topics of my projects that I share in my Github repositories and Kaggle profile:

•Time Series with Machine Learning Algorithms
•Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
•Recommendation Systems -Hybrid Recommender System
•Natural Language Processing, NLP
•Unsupervised Machine Learning (K-Means, PCA, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis)
•House Price Prediction with LightGBM
•Boosting ML Algorithms such as XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost
•Bagging algorithms such as Random Forest
•Customer Segmentation Analysis
•RFM Segmentation with KNN
•AB testing
•Advertising Regression
•CRM Analytics
•CLTV Analysis
•Feature Engineering
•Pareto Analysis
•Recommendation System with Association Rule
•Wilson Lower Bound – Rating, Sorting
•Pyspark Churn Prediction
•Home Credit Default Risk, etc.

My lifelong learning journey continues.

Stay tuned to see you on the next topic ?