You may have noticed some changes around here and on my Twitter account. I've relocated to my beloved New York City and am currently attending an immersive data science bootcamp at Metis. Through mid-September, I'll be honing my existing skills in Python, statistics, and analysis and developing an entirely new set in topics like machine learning, Javascript, SQL, and Hadoop.

An integral part of Metis's bootcamp is the completion of five self-designed data science projects that both emphasize and develop data science and machine learning skills. These projects use real world¹ data, tight deadlines, and simulate many of the challenges encountered by data scientists. I started my third project last Monday and look forward to sharing a few of them here and on GitHub in the coming weeks.

How's it going so far?

Incredibly busy, but great! It is invigorating to be surrounded by so many talented classmates and instructors. I've scraped more web pages and queried more APIs than I care to count, and I'm getting to know the workings of scikit-learn very well.

I am concurrently serving as a teaching assistant for the first eight weeks of the bootcamp. So I've been able to share my love of groupbys, merges, and facet plots with my fellow classmates.

What's next?

Hopefully a swift return to the world of the gainfully employed after the bootcamp finishes in September, but beyond that, I can't say for sure. In the meantime, rest assured that I'll be writing lots of Python code.

In that spirit, I'll leave you with one of my favorite Python cartoons: