Originally I was not too keen on writing an industry analysis essay. It was near the middle of my draft that I conceded the necessity of such an assignment. It served as a foundational point to keep myself well informed of the career route and my goals into a concrete written format. In addition, fleshing out details can sometimes bright into light certain realities and what may or may not be pragmatic. I will write my personal thoughts and developments first before moving onto the required postings.
Personal thoughts and development:
With that being said, I am keeping myself well informed of the current market. The continuous Federal rate cut should help bring in more capital and increase the flow of wealth velocity. The tech industry as a whole is not a trend but a foundation of our modern society. As such, it will continue to follow the bust and boon of the market. With every depression comes with recovering expansion and vice versa. Therefore my hope in entering a career in technology either as a software or machine learning engineer remains solidly strong.
In regards to my personal project and education, I have also started the process of creating a rough outline in Python to code linear regression. Using PyCharm as my IDE and a text files with sample data, I've written a basic cost function, which for one variable is:
J(w,b) = (1/(2m))∑(m-1,i=0) (f(w,b)(x^i)-(y^i))^2
*where the prediction for the model f(w,b)(x^i) = w(x^i)+b
and implemented a gradient descent algorithm to adjust the parameter values of "w" and "b" to get a smaller cost J(w,b).
In addition, the learning and usage of numpy library to utilize arrays effectively and matplotlib library for plotting graphs has been a fun one for sure. I will continue to work on getting familiar with all the necessary features of these libraries and the math involved before I move onto regressions involving multiple parameters.
Required postings:
Part 1
What are the top 3 items that you are good at, and what are the top three areas you feel you are weak in?
I am quite adequate at reading, taking notes, and questionings. I am however, quite weak at faithfully keeping to a schedule, getting distracted, and reciting what I have read or learned.
Part 2
Sample of my activities for this week:
15 Jan (Wednesday)
- 11am-1pm, read materials for the week
16 Jan (Thursday)
- 10:30am, finished quiz on Academic writing
- 11:30am, finished quiz on Peer Review Guidelines
- 6:10pm, submitted weekly survey
- 6:15pm, had instructor meeting
- 6:30pm, had team meeting
- 7pm, started and finished CollabU assignment
17 Jan (Friday)
- 11am-2pm, started draft of the essay
19 Jan (Sunday)
- 7pm-11pm, continued and finish draft of the essay
20 Jan (Monday)
- 6:30pm-7:30pm, peer reviewed Valentina's essay
21 Jan (Tuesday)
- 1pm-2pm, peer reviewed Brandon's essay
Part 3
Project management is constrained mainly by 3 factors: scope, time, and cost. If one changes, the others will change as well. Creation of a project begins with a need. This need can be based on market, business, social, ecological, etc. Project proposal and selection then follows after. The success of the project will then follow on the project manager (pm) who will utilize both technical and intra-personal skills. Some of the techniques pm will use include work breakdown structures and Gnatt charts. Work breakdown structure is simply a hierarchical decomposition of a project into deliverables whereas Gnatt charts visually break down project charts onto a time schedule.
Part 4
Some of my favorite presented capstone projects were:
Security Scan Project - essentially a translation program. Turns a SARIF file into a layman friendly readable output. It's always good to see anything esoteric broken down enough for a regular person to be able to decipher.
Requisite Organization - A program that provides visual representation of organizations hierarchy. This project seemed very simple but effective at what it is trying to provide.
However, as a fan of machine learning and AI, my favorite project was the "Identifying Brain Tumors using Computer Vision" by Robin Hurtado. From what I understood, Ms. Hurtado helped with the training and testing a model to improve its detection capabilities. Overlapping a predicted mask with the actual mask and giving it two different score models (the Intersection Over Union and Dice Coefficient) to train the algorithm to correctly detect a tumor sounded very fascinating to me. I wish the presentation was able to provide some snippets of used code sections for me to parse through.
Part 5
I've realized that the contents of part 5 is essentially the first paragraph of this blog + my personal thoughts and development section.
Hello Wootark,
ReplyDeleteThis is a comprehensive activity log of each assignment done for the week. I did not log my activity as precisely, so I had to backtrack to construct my activity log. Overall, I think you set a good study pace throughout the week. I also struggle at sticking to a regular schedule.
Hey Tom,
ReplyDeleteYour activity log reflects your understanding of the curriculum and your detail oriented nature. My activity log screenshot does not include any time allotted to the class. It seems like you understood the assignment much better than me!
Hello Tom,
ReplyDeleteYour approach of displaying your personal thoughts and development is very interesting. That is something I did but only focus on the week's material, so I'll take into consideration sharing more general thoughts. I suggest to be more clear on each part and what you've learned from it. For example, for part 1 it could be useful for the reader to know you'll be reviewing and reflecting on Learning Strategies and maybe mentioned Dr. Bob's document: Effective Study Skills to demonstrate that you read it and you could implement a specific method from it or that you already do (maybe mention the specific method from the doc). Besides this, your journal for the week is very organized and easy to read.
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteYour activity log is quite thorough, including logs for reading course material, meetings, and when you start/finish assignments. My activity log is not quite as specific as yours, although, at the time, I felt mine got the point across.
- Brandon Evans
Greetings Tom!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part of this blog is the mini update to your personal development. I am not an expert in Data Science, but It's very exciting to see peers working on personal projects and watching them level up their game! In terms of time management, I too tend to get distracted and plan to work on my ability to stay focused. In a world where everything is trying to compete for our attention, its important to take steps to minimize the likelihood of getting distracted.