Techies, Here are the Best Free Online Data Science Courses

These data science courses are offered by reputed tech universities.

In the current technological world, data science is one of the most in-demand skills. Companies across industries are leveraging data science capabilities to gain a competitive edge and make sense of the pools of data that are available as resources. Owing to the massive industry demand, data science is also becoming a lucrative career option for individuals who want to enter the tech world.

If you are a beginner who wants to pursue this route, there are several online courses (free and paid) that will teach you the basics and the required skills to do a commendable job. Here's an article by Analytics Insight that highlights the best courses for beginners. If you are an experienced professional, it's a good idea to polish your skills and get updated with the changing demands of this field. To help you find the right intermediate-level courses free of cost, here are our recommendations for you.

1. Principles, Statistical and Computational Tools for Reproducible Data Science

Provided by Harvard University, this is an online course that will teach you skills and tools that support data science and reproducible research. If you have a hard time visually representing your findings, this course will help you do thorough research, reproduce it, and communicate it to the team efficiently. The duration of this course is for eight weeks and you can learn for free till September 15, 2021.

2. Big Data Analytics using Spark

This online course by UC San Diego is a part of its MicroMasters program. Essential for analyzing big data sets that require the use of distributed file systems like Hadoop and Spark, this course will teach to look for bottlenecks in massive parallel computation and how to use spark to minimize these bottlenecks. Through this, you will gain hands-on experience using PySpark within the Jupyter notebooks environment.

3. Data Analysis: Statistical Modeling and Computation in Applications

Offered by MITx, this course will start with a review of common statistical and computational tools such as hypothesis testing, regression, and gradient descent methods. You will study common models and methods to analyze specific types of data in four different domain areas, Epigenetic Codes and Data Visualization, Criminal Networks and Network Analysis, Prices, Economics and Time Series, and Environmental Data and Spatial Statistics.

4. Machine Learning with Python: from Linear Models to Deep Learning

In another course offered by MITx, here, you will learn about the principles and algorithms for converting training data into effective automated predictions. Topics like representation, over-fitting, regularization, generalization, VC dimension, clustering, classification, reinforcement learning, online algorithms, etc. will be covered. You will also implement and experience the algorithms in many Python projects designed for practical application.

5. Data Analytics for Business

Presented by Georgia Tech University, this course prepares students to understand business analytics and become leaders in these areas in business organizations by using scientific processes of transforming data into insights for making better business decisions. From methodologies, issues to challenges related to analyzing business data, this course will teach you how to apply business analytics algorithms and methodologies to solve business problems.