On Friday, we invited Victor Palacios, a Data Scientist at KNIME to an informal chat about a project he will be launching on our platform. In this project you will learn the logic necessary to help you build a model to detect deception in speech. You will dive into the mechanisms of Natural Language Processing learning everything from scrapping text data to model selection in NLP focused problems.

Want to watch the video instead?

Visit The Gradient Boost for more information.

In simple terms if you meet atleast 70% of Indicina’s minimum requirements and build this project to a satisfactory standard you will be in line for an interview and possible job offer. As this project is tied to a job, it will not be a guided project. However, you will have the option to post questions for more clarity.

What is the project

In this project you will be required to implement a URL shortening website using your frontend and backend stack of choice with NodeJS and React being the most preferred. Your work on this project will have be required to provide a detailed description of how to run your assignment in a separate markdown file, commit every step of the project and then ultimately submit and publish the code with all the git log history to a public repository for example GitHub.

If you are looking to complete this project to get a job; you will ideally have atleast 3 years experience in a Software Engineering leadership role with experience working with SaaS companies and atleast some familiarity with; Typescript, Node.js, ReactJS, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, Prisma, MySQL, PHP, Bitbucket Pipelines, GraphQL and Rest API. If you don’t meet the company’s requirements, completing this project will be a good upskilling exercise and you will receive community support along the way.

Extra Tips

You will stand out if you use Docker compose and have well written tests (all types of tests are acceptable).

Visit

https://thegradientboost.com to access further details regarding this project

What is The Gradient Boost

The Gradient Boost is a platform helping you learn, get upskilled and get tech jobs through building projects guided by mentors. We partner with experienced professionals around the world working in Data Science, Analytics, Data Engineering, DevOps and Software Engineering along with companies to create projects simulating real world tasks.

The best way to learn is through building. You can pay a small fee to unlock projects created by experienced professionals; getting access to mentor guided videos, walking you through the logic behind each build, support and feedback upon completion.

Company projects are free to all. Completing these projects to a satisfactory standard and meeting the company’s minimum requirements will result in consideration for a job.

As a reminder, The Gradient Boost is a platform enabling users to learn, get upskilled and get tech jobs through building mentor guided projects simulating real world tasks. Our projects are created by a combination of experienced professionals in Data Science, Data Engineering, DevOps and Software Engineering and companies. The best way to learn technical skills and kick start a solid career in these high paying fields is through building real world projects not only helping you understand how to apply your skills to practical business problems, but to communicate your work to business stakeholders and build a portfolio that will actually impress employers.

You can visit our platform, pay to unlock a project; getting access to mentor guided videos walking you through the logic of each project build, support from mentors and feedback upon completion.

In this podcast we invited one of our project creators; a Data Scientist with experience in MLOps and one of the co-founders of The Gradient Boost; Stephen Oladele. We spoke about his project on building a price estimation software to predict the prices of unleased games for a hypothetical gaming company; KaloR2.

We invited Wale Akinfaderin to an informal chat. Wale is a data scientist at Amazon Web Services. He was previously the lead data scientist at Duke Energy Corporation and holds a PhD in Physics from Florida State University. We invited some users on our platform and other guests to join the chat, adding more diversity in the line of questioning to make it a more interesting chat. We touched on multiple topics ranging from understanding the difference between different ‘careers’ within data science, changing expectations as one transitions from junior to intermediate to senior and some of the interesting projects he works on outside of his work.

We dove into detail regarding the intersection of aspirations and visions that led to this collaboration and how we see it developing in the future and more importantly helping students looking to get into data science achieve better outcomes.

For full details of this partnership, here is a link to the press release from the Port Harcourt School of AI

Press Release

YouTube Version:

We also spoke about the different problems encountered in data science leadership, adoption of data science and in data collection in different organizations.

For the YouTube video:

Our co-host for today is one of our students, Boipeo Motsosi. We got pretty personal about how self-doubt affects us and how breaking into a new career can be daunting yet so rewarding.

Watch our facial expressions as we tear up about our lost hopes and triumphs on the YouTube version here:

We also spoke about Ajibola’s experience interviewing with our hiring partner companies offering internships to some students who complete our program, working on a case study from a real world company, and how the program helped him gain more confidence going forward.

For the video version visit our YouTube Channel

We spoke to Kwadwo about balancing learning data science while building his venture, how data science ties into his existing skillsets as a software engineer, the value of mentorship when learning, unfinished online courses (I am sure we all have a few of these) and the value of having structure when approaching learning a new skill.

We co-hosted this podcast with one of our May 2020 cohort student; Akinloye Okunola who spoke a bit about his experience learning through The Gradient Boost and a new business he has started.

For the video version visit our YouTube Channel

A few weeks ago, we had a chat with Karel Verhoeven, the Head of Data Science and Analytics at Lulalend, an SME financing startup in South Africa. We got to learn a bit more about projects his data science team works on, specifically touching on how they predict risk and determine whether to give out a loan or not.

Karel also gave his thoughts regarding the challenges he encounters mentoring both aspiring and junior data scientists and the benefits of aspiring data scientists who are more practical and hands on.We co-hosted this podcast with Sebastian Dyantyi, a Client Partner at WhereIsMyTransport and one of our May 2020 cohort students; Ajibola Lawal

For the video version you can visit our YouTube Channel

We spoke to Chris about his ‘accidental’ journey into data science, data journalism, the value of data science in both large businesses and SMEs and how well it is received. We also had a more abstract discussion about how data influences decision making both in corporations and in public policy, specifically asking the question if data should outweigh instinct and contextual knowledge and where the limitations of data driven lie.

For the video version, visit our YouTube channel

We spoke about Sparkle and got a better understanding of how they are using Data Science to better understand their market and customer behavior. For the video version visit our YouTube Channel

For learners enrolled in our program, particularly based in Nigeria, he also gave some insight on who they looking to hire for their internships.

In this chat we spoke about the data science landscape in Nigeria, getting into more detail about the challenges of scaling a data science team in the country, specifically issues regarding the local talent pipeline giving real insight into what someone looking to get a job in Data Science needs to do to truly stand out. We also got more context on how Renmoney uses data to drive decisions and help provide loans to under-banked individuals and SMEs.

For the video version of the podcast check out our YouTube channel

Our podcast will be about having conversations about all things data science related in Africa.