Knowing that I only have a few courses to go before I graduate makes me both excited and quite a bit nervous. Instead of taking 2 (8 week) courses this semester I will only be taking 1 (5410 Deployment of Advanced Analytics) and it will start in March. The professor shared an old 8 week syllabus with me and stated that the main adjustment is that the course will be in Python and not in R. I have been trying to improve my R skills via the Posit tutorials and others but I may have to switch gears. The professor’s rationale in the e-mail response makes sense. Python has won out in this space and it makes sense to prepare students with the tools where more jobs are available. He did recommend that I prepare by going to the Statlearning site and reviewing the material there. The site and resources reminds me a lot of the OpenStatistics companion site and how helpful the set up and the resources were. The other positive about this text and site is that it offers both applications in R and Python.

Anticipating this move from R to Python in the program, I went back for another Python refresher and completed the Intro to Python course on Datacamp and the new 2023 version of the Python Quick Start course on LinkedIn. I had previously completed the 2019 release in 2021. I also completed the overview Introduction to Data Science ‘crash’ course (2 hours) by Madecraft on LinkedIn Learning.

Also, considering my lack of interest in Python’s data visualization tools and that D3 requires a time intensive commitment (that’s definitely not feasible right now with what’s on my my plate) I’m moving towards exploring Tableau as my data visualization tool. So, I completed the Introduction to Tableau course also on DataCamp and it is definitely a tool that I want to keep exploring.