My Journey into Business Intelligence/Data Analyst
I was introduced to Data Analytics rather not knowing it existed back in 2011 where I was doing my undergrad in Industrial Engineering and Management. We had courses that focused on Statistics and Operations Research.
My first exposure to Data Analytics was through Statistics and Operations Research A number of people have asked me why are you doing a Masters in Data Analytics after an MBA? Why an MS after an MBA? I decided to share my story through this post. I hope this helps anyone who is looking for a change in their career or even just wanting to start their career in data science.
I always was fascinated by the real-world applications of these two subjects, in 2013 I got to work on a real-world project at a company where we applied Value Stream Mapping to a production line. Value Stream Mapping is a Lean Management technique that helps analyze the current state and the future state of a series of events that occur in a production line.
As I completed my undergrad and I knew I was passionate about Analytics during the time MBA was a good option with a combination of Management and Analytics. I decided to pursue an MBA in Supply Chain Analytics. This opened up possibilities for me to take up Supply Chain Analytics as my career, this was when the Data Science was a booming word all over the internet around 2016.
I decided to get a degree in Data Analytics
During 2016 with the skills I had in Supply Chain Analytics it was hard to find a job in Pittsburgh PA. I recall watching some YouTube videos one evening, and stumbled on this video and this gave me an insight into Data Science and its applications. Before I joined the program I went through programming courses online in Coursera and edX and hence decided to get a degree in Data Analytics.
In 2017 I was fortunate enough to get a full-time job as a Data Scientist at a startup while I was studying part-time with knowledge in R programming, Exploratory Data Analysis and Principles and Applications of Analytics as my completed courses.
At my first job, I started learning Python and I was writing code to parse information from the internet though I did not get a chance to work on any real data science project. It was time to move on, during the time I had this amazing class on Data Visualizations which helped me get a second job which is my current one.
Learned Programming Here is some list of courses that I took apart from my course credits helped me learn to program: Introduction to R programming -
Took the CS Introduction to understand the basics from Harvard University on YouTube Got a Kaggle profile and started using some of the skills on the datasets available on Kaggle. Introduction to Python - Practice, Practice, and Practice
How I started my blog - where it all began
Currently, I work as a Data Analyst at a medium-sized tech company in Pittsburgh. I am on a path to bring my Data and Storytelling skills, hence I decided to start this blog to share my knowledge and some fun adventurous data journey. I am in no way an expert in this field, we are all just here for learning and having some fun.