Can you get a job in data science and machine learning without a college degree?

🧵👇

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer, keep reading 👇

(Advice from industry experts who I talked to.)
Companies are looking for people who add value.
In order to add value, you'll need skills. Simple as that.

Get the skills to provide value and you'll get the job.
In the age of the internet where everything is pretty much free, why do college degrees matter?

A college degree makes it easier to get the skills to get a job in machine learning or data science.
College degrees also help you make many useful connections and provides many opportunities in the form of internships and whatnot.

College degrees have their own place
However that does not mean that you cannot get into these fields without a degree, it'll just take more work.
For machine learning and data science you mainly need 3 skills:

- The theoretical part which mainly includes math
- The practical part which includes programming skills
- An understanding of the industry in which one is applying machine learning and data science
Most people will probably stop here because of the math.

Math is important, but not when you are starting out. You can learn math as and when you need it, programming is actually the more important part.
Start by having strong fundamentals in programming.
This is more important than you think it is.
Python, R and Julia are some of the options out there.
Python is the most recommended for several reasons.
Next, work on a few Kaggle challenges by taking the help of submissions of other users, the docs and the internet.

While you are making these models, try to research a bit more about what's going on under the hood.
If you're making a neural network, try researching about the some of the activation functions you have used in the model.
This was just one approach to learning the skills needed for machine learning and data science. Do what works for you, just get the job done.
And of course, this isn't going to be a very easy process.

It could take more than a year before you could get ready for applying to jobs.

That doesn't mean it can't be done.

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A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.