
“Data are modern oil, and it is important that we have the ability to extract this oil, refine it and convert it from its raw form into something that benefits the consumer.”
(David Buckingham)
“Data science” is one of the most important modern science in this era, and the job in this field has become the most attractive in our time, and one number in countries like the United States (2), but it is expected that the number of jobs available to it will increase to more than 4 million A job in the US only. According to a recent study, a large number of computer science programs do not qualify students to work in this field (3), and here comes the role of educational initiatives and courses offered by companies and institutions of higher education in various parts of the world, in this report we will highlight a group of them.
Microsoft data science learning program
The famous Microsoft company offers a professional program specialized in data science, which includes ten electronic courses offered through the “edX” platform taught by a group of experts and specialized academic professors, and aims to develop specific skills for its students to enable them to work in this field, the most prominent characteristic of these courses is the availability in the form of Free via the platform, that is, it is available to all people who have the requirements to study this program, and those enrolled in the program can obtain an approved certificate from the company upon completing any of the courses included in the program plan or after they have completed it, but they will pay for it.
Introduction to data science
This is the first course in the professional program, and it is an introductory course that establishes students with knowledge of data science and specifically with regard to working with data in Excel, exploring it, and photographing data in Excel, then moves them to important topics in statistics such as central tendency, contrast, and regression analysis, and the student also recognizes On the stories of a group of data scientists and their motives for choosing this field, the course is offered over a period of six weeks, with two to four hours of weekly learning.
Query the data
The second course in the group, and focuses on querying data using the SQL programming language, and the student gets acquainted with the data types during the course, how to use the “Tactic SQL” language, creating queries with it, and building query tables , And use of functions and data collection, organization and amendment of data, and how to identify and process error messages, the course extends for about six weeks, and needs four to five hours per week.
Data analysis and imaging
The third of the group’s courses, and is part of another program’s courses also offered by Microsoft on Big Data, which is presented with two tracks for each of them a special course, meaning that the student has two options to study analyzing and photographing data, namely: the path of analyzing and photographing data using Excel, where He will learn how to import data from multiple databases and files, transfer data, how to model it, ways to explore it, analyze and photograph it with Excel, and learn about the copy of Excel that must be dealt with, and some instructions related to dealing with the program, in addition to some tools such as: Data Analysis Expressions (DAX This course requires study for about two to four hours per week for a period of six weeks, while the second track is to analyze and visualize data using Power BI, where the student learns how to use the program to import data from databases, transfer data, Building queries, changing data types, and using the program in managing and modeling data, analyzing and photographing it using different tools, requires six weeks to study it at a rate of three hours per week.
Basic statistics for data analysis using Excel
This is the group’s fourth course, and it focuses on teaching students some topics of statistics related to data analysis such as descriptive statistics, random variables, probability theory, samples and fields of confidence, testing of statistical hypotheses, in addition to providing them with sources of reading, and making discussions on the topics studied, and the duration of this course is six weeks As in the previous courses, it takes two to four hours per week.
Explore data using the code
In the fifth group’s courses, the student will learn how to explore data using the code, and here he also has two options, just as in the third course, and he must choose either to study data exploration using the programming language (R), and in this case he has to join the course presented in The R Language for Evidence, “which is a four-week course that requires three hours of weekly learning, during which he will learn the basics of the” R “language and how to use it to analyze and visualize data, and if he does not want to learn the” R “language he can choose to learn the programming language” Python ” ), Then he can choose the second course which is “Introduction to Python for Data Science” and has a duration of six weeks, and the person will be trained in this course on the basics of Python, how to create Python lists, use of functions, the “Numpy” language and how to create NMBY matrices and imaging Data using the Python language.
Understand basic concepts in data science
In this course, the sixth in the group, the student will reach the stage of exploring data science operations, applying probability theory and statistics in data science, and important concepts in data acquisition, preparation, exploration and imaging, while studying practical practical models such as how to build cloud data using one of the programming languages that he learned Or other tools, and he will study topics about machine self-learning such as: classifications, evaluation of regression models, and cluster analysis. The student will need six weeks to study the course, three to four hours per week.