Source
r/datascience•
sequi_virtus

How can I learn statistics and data science quickly?

Education

Hello,

I am a medical student researching population health. At my institution, there is a shortage of statisticians and data scientists. It seems that I could be most useful, and that I could actually get some papers completed, if I could do the statistics myself. What is the fastest way I can learn the statistics and the data science/programming skills needed to do research?

For reference, I am looking to analyze trends in large data sets. I believe I would need to learn about a. basic statistics (the different tests and when to use them) b. clustering, and c. I would like to learn some AI (not for the purposes of building a highly predictive algorithm but things like random forests to determine contributing factors behind an outcome). I'm sure that there are other things I need to know, but I don't know what I don't know.

I took one statistics class in college that taught me some R, I know basic python but none of the math or AI modules, and I can use a Linux command line for basic things.

Any advice is appreciated!

Posted Apr 30, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

06
Straight-Second-9974•

Khan academy to learn statistics, linear algebra, calculus. Statquest on YouTube to learn principles of ML. Data science programming you can practice with Kaggle datasets, find some kernels with lots of upvotes and try to make sense of what they’re doing. Find a beginner project idea to practice (one I did as a beginner was a content based filtering movie recommender system with IMDb data using cosine similarity).

4
psychTN•

Team up with a senior PHD or MPH student, they can help you with the basics or find a mentor. If your are at a AMC there are usually a ton of students doing postdoc. They are going to be a good resource for basic stats. If your medical school is connected to a graduate program, try to take a semester of grad stats. Even with big datasets, you can accomplish a lot with just learning the basics of regression. AI and ML is usually overkill at your level.

3
lhhe•

Check out the book practical statistics for data scientists

1
DrummerClean•

Hire/find a mentor

1
YUNIKARN•

I would start with an applied DS course. We have one on YUNIKARN. Usually, it takes about 6 to 8 weeks to work through the course if spend about 3 hours a week. We also have Python tutorials for DS. Let me know if you have any questions

0
Grove_street_home•

Check out scikit-learn (a Python module). You can use it to apply common algorithms in just a couple of lines. The website has all the documentation you need. You need suitable data though, so you need to preprocess it using e.g. normalization and imputation.

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