Based upon the popularity of a previous post about a certificate program from the University of Washington, it appears that many people are interested in learning the skills necessary to become a data scientist. Thus, I decided to compile a list of some of the possible learning strategies.

Traditional College Education

The most obvious path would be to study at a traditional college or university. Colleges and universities are starting to notice the demand for data science skills, and many colleges are currently offering programs to prepare someone as a data scientist. This path is safe and predictable. Do the homework, complete the courses, and get the degree or certificate. Most people are familiar with the process, and it offers few surprises. The problems here are the costs, lack of flexibility, and time involved.

Corporate Training

Companies are now starting to offer training programs for data science. EMC is leading the way in this category with their data science training program. Cloudera also offers lots of training related to hadoop and big data. Wolfram offers data science training with Mathematica. One of the problems with this category is the cost. Another problem is the companies have the tendency to teach and promote their own products. This may leave the student with numerous gaps in the full data science spectrum.

Your Thoughts?

What are you thoughts about the above approaches? What are the positives and negatives? Also, later this week I will be posting some less-traditional approaches to learning data science.