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Ask HN: Are there any professionally valuable MOOCs on data science?

9 points by eauxuae ↗ HN
Hello everyone, a bit of a context here: I am in my mid-thirties, living in France and I have the equivalent of Higher National Diploma (2 years in college) in Computer Science with a few years of coding experience (mostly Python, Ruby and SQL). For the last couple of years, I have been working as an IT coordinator in an educational institution, which ended up being an administrative position and not very stimulating to me. Today, I want my career to be more intellectually-challenging and I aim to have a job related to Data Science: the problem is I don’t have a lot of knowledge neither in R nor in the statistical methods. Obviously, there are A LOT of offerings, but are there any certifications well-regarded by international employers available online? Thanks in advance for your feedback!

8 comments

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DrNuke
There are a few courses and HNers will make a list for sure (Andrew Ng's, fast.ai, kaggle competitions and so on) but no magic wand, you will still need convincing someone to hire you. Therefore, your best shot imho is to have a good look locally and tailor your learning experience on the needs of your local job market, with the clear advantage of face-to-face relationships and local networking putting you ahead of unknown quantities in the employers' eye. Good luck!
eauxuae
Hey DrNuke, thanks for your message! So do you think that it doesn't matter to an employer if you got a certificate created by Johns Hopkins on Coursera or another one from DataCamp at the end? I don't mean to discredit DataCamp, but it's not the same brand as Johns Hopkins. And do you think that these certificates add value at all in today's job market?
DrNuke
You are hired to add value, not because of a certification, and no employer cares about the provider if you can't solve their problem. Knowing the employer and his problem is more important than knowing data science.
hackermailman
You can take the real Masters of Data Science from Johns Hopkins online if you want https://ep.jhu.edu/admissions-and-financial-aid/admissions/i... it's about $24k, and your diploma + work exp likely satisfies entry requirements as they look at both.
eauxuae
Hey hackermailman, is that 24K/year or for the whole Master's Degree? Definitely going to take a look indeed!
hackermailman
I got that figure from here https://ep.jhu.edu/files/ge-ds-pmc.html it is apparently for the whole 3 yr degree (plus book fees) for the 6 core req courses at $4,055 ea for graduate (400-level and higher) tuition though it seems there's also optional electives not included. You would obviously have to contact them and verify this.
eauxuae
Sounds interesting – will do – thank you!