I started an introductory NLP course on DataCamp. It is part of the Machine Learning Scientist with Python track.

I like NLP, and it seems excellent. It is also harder for me than other machine learning methods. Regression and classification models seem a lot more intuitive than bags of words and TF-IDF.

It is not the first time they use TF-IDF on the courses I take in DataCamp. They have used the method in a few lessons. And the more I see it, the more familiar it becomes. I guess I have just been more used to using numbers than sentences.

I am also taking a SQL course in Kaggle. It uses BigQuery by Google (Kaggle being a Google property), so it is different from the SQLite I have learned so far in CS50.

Speaking of CS50, I have until December 31st at midnight to finish the course to get a certificate. I am so far in the middle of the Web track: three more videos, a homework problem building a web app, and then the final project. I have to stay focused if I don’t want to spend Christmas working on the final project =)

Also, I have just finished course 5 of the HarvardX certificate program: Productivity Tools. They cover Unix, git, and GitHub, among other things. It is nice that now I understand some of the commands I used to get this blog onto GitHub. At the time, I was crossing my fingers, hoping I copied the instructions right hehe.

I have to say that I am really enjoying this journey. Every day, I look forward to working on my courses when I get some free time from work. It usually is the best part of my workday.