My pathway was really long and different and I wouldn’t recommend this pathway for anyone who is out there. But it got me to a place where I learn and apply the concepts I learned about Data Science.
Back in school when I was 11 years old, I started learning about computers in school. We had to study the basic HTML in 6th class (which is still relevant as many sites still uses html tags). When I look back, I found it really a hard topic for a 6th standard student to learn but thanks to my teachers for making it simple for us to study. I loved HTML at that time. I still remember we had half yearly exam question to display our postal address on web browser (Internet Explorer at that time) using HTML and me going a bit extra mile using heading and marquee tags. That when I tasted the coding for the first time and it was awesome.
Then I learned a bit of Visual Basic which was a thing a few years back for a science exhibition at school. Even though the project, ‘School Administration System software’ was not made by me, but I learned a few basic of VB just to impress the judges if any questions are asked. Unfortunately, the project didn’t do well in the fair. The judges asked questions about a search feature in the program which used student id to search for students. I still remember a lady of the judging panel asking what if we don’t know the student id and we just know his name, how can we pull out the student details. Only then I thought about the need of such a feature and tried to tackle the question by saying, ‘That’s an important feature, which we are going to implement in the next version’. I could see that she was not impressed by me playing smart. That was me when I was 16 years old.
After schooling, I joined for my bachelors degree in engineering with electrical and electronics specialization. Even though computers were my favorite thing till this day, I chosen electrical as thats the my first love before computers at school. After school time, we used to make drilling machines using batteries and motor from cars and audio cassette players and try to drill walls and desks of our classroom. Ok, that was in 2000, nearly 8 years of age. Back to engineering time, I started making websites for businesses for pocket money along with a few other friends. I also used to make website for our college technical festivals. I always liked to code and edit it see the changes and Google and learn more things on making it as required. Thats how I got to know and mess with codes.
The field of data science was totally a new thing for me until I join for work at Reliance and Shriram Finance. They were using the tools like Tableau and PowerBI for visualization purpose. Most of our clients were using some or different kinds of data analytics tools for data driven decision making. I really enjoyed it and playing with graphs. I went online and tried to gain knowledge about this. I find predictive analytics similar to the statistical question in mathematics we used to have for our CBSE class 10 board exams where we extrapolate the line in graph paper to find the unknown value of y for a given x value. I also found many foreign universities providing masters in this new field. Thats when I my best friend moved to Australia, following his path, I also moved to Australia after getting admission at Deakin University in Melbourne, Victoria for Master of Business Analytics. The Deakin, laid the foundation of Data Science in my life and now I am confident to do projects on my own. The work experience and the MBA not only helped me to understand how different companies work but also to give insights what managers are expecting and to apply into the business.
I have studied totally different things in my life. Website designing while doing Engineering Degree in electrical and electronics engineering, then MBA in Marketing and Operations Management, and then doing Masters in Business Analytics. Through out everything, I was always around computer even when my curriculum doesn’t demand to be. Even though it appear totally different fields, for me the transition was very smooth, I was just applied what I learned before in the next stage. Of course, I have made many mistakes in my life. But that the beauty of life, you don’t have to be perfect always. I know, if I would have taken computer science for engineering, I would have more coding knowledge. But I don’t regret. I had the variety of experience only because of such small mistake (which I love). I always liked to be ‘and person’, like an Electrical engineer who love coding, a Data scientist who blogs and play piano.
Speaking of doing different things, I have worked as Kitchen hand, A Mexican chef, An Italian Pizza Chef and even as a delivery truck driver in Melbourne while studying at Deakin University. But that’s entirely different story, not for today. Thanks for your time. Cheers.