Welcome to the homepage of MAGIC's BigData Colab. This github repo will be your one stop shop for the class. You can find the notebooks, cool articles, and more resources on the topics we're going to cover.
The goal of this class is to expose curious and independent learners to python and basic data science and machine learning techniques. We'll cover the python language, general programming principles, important libraries and tools, and basic ML algorithms. We've designed the topics to be accessible to all levels, so while previous programming experience will be helpful, its certainly not required. In fact, its far more important to be curious and want to learn!
The class is going to be a combination of zoom "lectures" and mini-projects all based on a series of Google Colab notebooks. In a colab notebook, you can create "cells" that can either hold text or run python code. All you need to run code in the notebooks is internet access. This is because Colab is built on top of the Google Cloud Platform. When you run code in a cell in Colab, it runs in Google's cloud and returns the output to your browser. For each topic each week, we'll work through the material in a Colab notebook together. The goal is to give you enough information and exposure to each topic so that you feel comfortable using the tech and have a base to expand upon. Each week, too, you'll have some challenge work or a mini project. This should give some more practice with the tools and ideas we talk about in the zoom sessions. By the end of the class, you will have your own Github repo with all the notes and code. Data science is a massive field, so there's no way we'll be able to talk about everything. After the eight weeks, though, we hope that you'll have the groundwork (and community!) to keep learning on your own.
Due to COVID restrictions, the class is never going to meet in person. Thats a shame because I was looking forward meeting and getting to know everyone. Since you're going to spend a few weeks listening to me blabber on about code, I figured you should know a little bit about me. My name is Sam Schoberg, and I'm a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park studying computer science. Maybe similar to some of you, my first exposure to programming was through MAGIC at their Capture the Flag cybersecurity event. Before then, I had always wanted to be a mechanical engineer. I was a senior in highschool at that point, and after one day of coding, I decided to switch my major at UMD to computer science. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made! Since then, tech has opened so many doors for me. At UMD, I worked part time with a research group who used software simulations to explain the origins of the universe, and now I work for Capital One Bank as a software engineering intern.
I'm hoping some of you will catch the coding bug like I did and decide its something worth pursuing. Tech is such an exciting field, so it doesn't take much to get people excited about learning. You may not go home after one day of the class and decide to switch your major or career (it would be awesome if you did :) ), but I do hope you'll be excited enough about the possibilites and opportunities that you'll keep learning on your own.
Feel free to connect with me on linkedin or check out some of my projects on Medium.