With an experience of over 14 years, Arnab Bordoloi has taken up various roles throughout his whole career. But what never changed was him working with data. So, when he got to know about data science, he was sure that he had to explore and learn more about it. And, that brought him to the Global Certificate in Data Science & AI (GCDAI) Program at INSAID.
In this interview, let’s see what interests him about data the most and why he thinks data science is the future.
Question 1: Which program & batch are you part of at INSAID & tell us more about your current work profile?
Arnab: I am part of the Global Certificate in Data Science & AI (GCDAI), March 2020 batch. Currently, I work as an associate manager leading multiple teams that are part of delivery support and automation for our clients in the oil and energy domain.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Data Science & Machine Learning?
Arnab: I have always been associated with data throughout my career; I started my career as an ETL developer. I used to do data migration between systems, and later I moved to another PL SQL. Previously I was also a data administrator and architect.
Since I’ve always had to work with data, data analysis, data cleansing, reporting, I was elated when I first learned about the concepts of data science. After I understood that this would be the future, I made up my mind to do a more structured and professional course on data science.
Question 3: What tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered in your Data Science & AI program at INSAID so far?
Arnab: I obtained clarity on various concepts and algorithms like random forest, support vector, machine regression, logistic regression, dimensionality reduction, clustering, etc. Today I’m comfortable using Python interpreter to create data analysis, plotting graphs using Matplotlib and Seaborn, and various Escalon libraries.
Question 4: What are some initial challenges when you got started on your Data Science journey, and how did you overcome them?
Arnab: The biggest challenge wasn’t the programming, but the concepts of data science. One has to understand the statistics involved to know what to use and how it provides us the solution. I overcame this challenge by putting more effort into understanding the theory and the mathematics involved.
Question 5: Which are some of the blogs that you follow?
Arnab: I follow KDnuggets, Reddit, and Kaggle. These sites provide me with enough information to go through daily.
Question 6: In your view, how has Data Science evolved in the last few years?
Arnab: Data science, in my opinion, has evolved significantly in recent years; the credit goes to the availability of data. Today we have enormous data due to the accessibility of the internet in every nook and corner of the world. A decade back, digital footprints were not well established, and data was, especially, sparse.
But now data is an integral part for almost everything – from businesses across industries to bots and any machinery. Storage capacity and processing power machines have drawn the world into the digital atmosphere. This paved the way for data science to unravel the hidden gems of accurate information and predictive results, which are essential for businesses nowadays. Today, data science is not a choice anymore but a must-have for any business.
Question 7: What is your advice to anyone wanting to start a career in Data Science?
Arnab: Although it is never too late, the right time to start is always today. So have no second thought and just kickstart your data science journey today.
This was a conversation with one of our GCDAI students – Arnab Bordoloi.
If you want to discover more student stories, go to INSAID Spotlight.
