Recursion means what?

I got rejected from a masters program

It’s been some time since my last email to you all. So where shall I begin?

Currently Reading:

Atomic Habits

I've finally started digging into this book, primarily because, if I'm being honest with myself, my daily habits have been all over the place, and my mentor noticed this. The goal now is to develop serious systems and habits to help me build a robust portfolio and prepare for career growth—goals that require me to have a clear head to make things happen.

One thing I've taken away from the book is that habits begin with your identity. The way you identify yourself says a lot about your habits. For instance, a person offered a cigarette who says, “I’m trying to quit,” has a different mindset from one who exclaims, “I’m not a smoker.” Who do you think will have an easier time creating the habit of not smoking? The latter, simply because they don’t identify as a smoker.

As such, I'd like to state that I am a Machine Learning Engineer and a student of Statistics and Data. Now, let’s get to habit making! The first step is to get my portfolio going!

Data Science Project:

I’ve figured out exactly what I want to do for a project. Working for a bank, Hancock Whitney, it makes sense to do something in the banking realm. I’ve found a dataset on Kaggle to analyze bank customers that churn and see if I can determine reasons for their churning. I chose this project because it would be a good one to replicate at work. With the current banking landscape, where banks are looking to increase deposits, a project like this could really set me apart from others.

I’ll start with some basic Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) and then choose an algorithm, probably a logistic regression model, and see where it goes from there.

The goal here is to utilize everything I’ve learned and continue learning in my current Machine Learning course.

Back when I was doing my Data Analytics Course from Google and the Data Science For All Bootcamp, I set aside three hours a day for study. I’m going to get back to that starting tomorrow!

Mentor:

We’ve split our sessions into two at the moment. One day of the week is focused on ML and my projects, and the next is for coding. It’s been beneficial, and the live coding has been great, except for one thing...

I feel quite daft during live coding sessions, like a deer in headlights. I often have no idea what to do or how to move forward and usually need quite a bit of help. To improve, I’ve dedicated some time every day to work on Stratascratch questions in both SQL and Python. The hope is that a 1% increase every day eventually becomes substantial. That’s the hope!

Masters:

I didn’t get into Georgia Tech, and after a conversation with my mentor, I think it’s going to be on the back burner for the time being. The focus right now is on career growth and creating strong study habits.

However, I won't give up on the idea of a Master’s degree. Let's be honest, those making the big bucks usually have their degrees. This isn’t to say that people without degrees aren’t successful as well, but a degree certainly helps in career growth, especially for someone like me, coming from a non-technical degree background.

However, there might be hope for me after all. I came across an article stating that the University of Pittsburgh is launching a Master's program available via Coursera. It's a fully accredited program starting in February, with a relatively low entry barrier—all one needs to do is pass the initial course with a 3.0 GPA or higher to continue with the actual Master's program. Now, I just need to find out what the initial course is about and get myself to a place where I have the systems and habits to succeed in any program I decide to enter.

Something New I'm Learning:

Recursion... if you asked me to explain it at this moment, I wouldn't be able to. So, I'm going to add it to my study session tomorrow before working on my DS project.

Until next week,

Arthur