Having spent a couple weeks finishing most of the setup of the blog, I guess it’s time for me to actually think about what I’m going to do next.

Books

I have a couple books that I want to just work through.

• Data Science from Scratch
• Python Data Science Handbook

I come into this project with a fairly substantial programming background (I’ve been programming for over 20 years) and a strong mathematical background (Ph.D. in Mathematics), so I’m not expecting the first book to be a complex read. However, I think it’s important to have a solid foundation, and I’m willing to invest a little extra time up front to make sure that all the pieces are in place.

In particular, I expect that there are certain coding habits used that are particularly efficient for data science applications, and rather than just muddling my way through those things, I’d like to learn those tricks up front. In the end, it’s probably going to be more efficient that way.

The second book looks to be a bit more interesting. The first book is about fundamentals and basics, but the second book is about specific tools that are used. The five sections are iPython, NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, and machine learning. So this will be a deep dive into specific tools, all of which I’ve used before, but only in my off-the-cuff hackish sort of way. I expect this reading to be a bit more of a slog, so I may have to mix it up with other things to keep myself going.

Websites

The other day, I came across the [Earth Data Science Courses & Workshops] (https://www.earthdatascience.org/courses/). This is out of the University of Colorado, and one of my colleagues has been to one of their seminars or conferences (or something). They gave it a high recommendation, so I’m looking forward to going through it.

They have both an Earth Analytics Python course and an Earth Analytics R course. It currently looks like the Python course is being revised, so I might start with the R course.

I guess they also have an online certificate program, but I’m not particularly interested in that. Besides, I’m going to be doing an MIS (Management Information Systems) certificate at UNLV, and so I don’t really think I need any more formal acknowledgements of knowledge gained.

MIS certificate

One of the more interesting parts of this for me is that I’ll be taking graduate courses at UNLV to complete a 12-credit MIS certificate. I had originally intended to get their Data Analytics certificate, but that program is undergoing some type of revision, and so this is what was recommended to me. It’s basically the same courses I would have taken, except possibly under slightly different labeling and possibly at a slightly higher level (which is good for me). There will be four classes I need to complete:

• MIS 766 - Data Management (Summer Session 2)
• MIS 761 - Data Analytics Statistical Methods and Tools (Summer Session 3)
• MIS 776 - Business Intelligence (Fall)
• MIS 769 - Big Data (Spring)

Technically, I’ll be done with my sabbatical before I complete the program, but I expect to be able to complete one course while also teaching. The original design was more of a boot camp, where I was going to crank out all the classes during the summer. But again, the program changed on me, and so this is just what I have to do.

Javascript

I think I really need to learn Javascript. There’s a gigantic hole in my background here, and this is probably the best time for me to go about filling it. I don’t exactly know what I want to do here, which is a little bit of a problem. I’m going to have to think about that some more. Even though my background with HTML5 and CSS is rather weak, I don’t think I need a ton of that to get going with Javascript, and I can branch out to either one from there. But I think the HTML/CSS that I learn will mostly be serving my attempts to learn Javascript. I might change my mind later, as I’ve already changed my mind a few times over the last couple weeks.

This is probably enough to do for the next several months. But I may find new things that interest me along the way and either add to this list or change it.