How to Succeed in a Data Science Boot Camp Without a STEM Background
By: Steven Markoe
Tags: Data Science, Boot Camp Classes, Towards Data Science, General Assembly

How to Succeed in a Data Science Boot Camp Without a STEM Background Steven Markoe Follow Sep 15 · 3 min read

An English degree can teach you a few useful skills. I believe my years spent reading and analyzing poetry taught me to be an empathetic citizen of the world, a middle-aged trivia wunderkind, and an uncompromising aesthete.

Yet here I am, years into a career built on soft skills, learning statistics and coding and git and ready to share with you a few things I wish I had known.

#1 You need a view from 30,000 feet

If you haven’t used a calculator in the last decade, you need to make sure you have a general understanding of the math you’ll be facing. Attempting to learn the entirety of Linear Algebra leading up to my start date, I wasted days following along to an MIT course. I spent very little time on Statistics because I believed it was an intuitive science. Both humbling mistakes.

My advice? Try to get a general understanding of how these subjects are related to machine learning. The class teaches you what you need to know to get the job done, not an MIT level theoretical understanding.

#2 Don’t worry, you’ll learn to code

I spent a lot of hours in the weeks leading up to the course feverishly learning basic Python. Remember, I have no experience in coding so there were days when I felt accomplished by simply learning about tuples. Guess what? You’ll spend about 5 minutes on tuples in week one. In fact, learning python from scratch takes exactly three days in the class. Trying to teach yourself Python without a technical background is slow and messy and you’ll spend time focusing on details that are irrelevant to the course.

My advice? Same as with the math. You need a general understanding of computer science. A great resource that paid dividends for me was the Computer Science series from Crash Course.

#3 Figure things out

Like everyone else in class, in the beginning you’ll come across situations that lead you to ask your instructors or classmates for assistance. The problem is, you’ll inevitably use your non-technical background as an excuse to have others sort out your bugs and solve your issues. You’ll convince yourself that the reason you’re having issues is your lack of technical skills.

My advice? Everyone in the class, the PhD's, the Python experts, even the instructors, get stuck at some point. You aren’t stuck because you’re inexperienced! You’re stuck because you’re learning data science! Keep plugging away, solving the problems yourself is the fun part.

#4 You’re here for a reason

It can be difficult to resist the urge to measure up to your classmates. After all, you’re learning the same material, completing the same homework, applying to the same jobs. You’ll wonder why someone else was able to slap together that function so much quicker than you, and didn’t we just learn that today?

My advice? Who cares. Why are you here? Personally, I enrolled in a Data Science boot camp to expand my hard skills and make myself indispensable at my next company. The only metric you need to worry about is knowledge gained. Time spent worried about your place in the class is time you could be spending immersing yourself in this new world.

Bottom line?

Do the work, ask questions, bring some energy every day, and you may just be able to fake it ’til you make it.