TENNYSON LEARNS
Creativity, Analysis and everything in between
Back in the day I remember an old saying that used to be passed around. Apparently it was based on an ancient Chinese proverb, and it went something like this:
When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago.
When is the second best time to plant a tree? Now.
​
I asked my mom​ about this saying because she understands a lot more Chinese than I do. She said she's never heard of this saying before. So maybe it's not actually a Chinese proverb. But I do think the saying has some value regardless.
​
20 years ago I was about 10. Back then I was probably more interested in playing with my toys than learning or growing. Hopefully 20 years from now, 50 year old me will be a lot more thankful to past Tennyson, i.e. present day "me".
​
This desire to perpetually learn and grow is driven in part by my belief in a growth mindset, I suspect. In essence this means that I believe I can grow in pretty much any area I want to given enough learning and study I put in. This desire to perpetually learn is why I want to continue to actively learn past my masters degree, and why I started this project during my masters program in 2020.
​
In terms of what I have done after my masters program, I completed IBM's Data Science Professional Certificate Program in 2020 too. When I was completing my undergraduate degree and all of those Statistics courses, the field of Data Science was still quite nascent, at least in the form that it is in now. As far as I understand it, Data Science today seems to be, in large parts, a blend of Statistics and Computer Science. Having a formal background in Statistics and some related experience in coding, I wanted to see what tools and techniques were used for Data Science today. The IBM Data Science program I completed was great in giving me that overview of the field as it is now.
Map of neighbourhoods in Amsterdam for my IBM Data Science capstone project
This program cumulated in a capstone project, where I could go through the entire data science process, from specifying the problem I wanted to solve, to collecting the data I would need, all the way to a report and blog about my findings. At the end of the project I wrote a blog post on LinkedIn. For record-keeping purposes, I have also created a copy of that blog post on my website here.
​
For future learning projects, I will probably create blog posts to summarise what I learned. If the projects are relevant to LinkedIn, I will probably post my blog posts there too.
​
I do have a YouTube channel for learning which I created during my masters program. It is currently empty though, and as I increase my capacity to juggle multiple projects meaningfully, I would like to make some videos too.
Link to my learning YouTube channel above.