4 Free Courses I Took to Learn Python for Data Science & AI
Beginner and advanced free courses I selected after taking over 10 courses.
Before paying for a course, it’s a good idea to check what has been published out there — there’s a decent amount of high-quality free content. This is what I did when I started learning Python for data science. I checked the curriculum of paid data science courses and then searched all the stuff related to Python.
I selected the best 4 free courses I took to learn Python for data science. The 4 courses cover some of the stuff in “The 4 Stages of Learning Python for AI & ML.” Although you won’t get a nice certificate after completing any of these courses, the knowledge you will acquire is priceless.
#1 Learn Python — Full Course for Beginners
This 4-hour Python beginners course covers all the basic Python stuff you need before learning libraries used in data science. This is a crash course in Python — when I took this course I had zero knowledge about programming. The course will show you how to set up Python, teach you how to print your first “Hello World”, and explain all the core concepts in Python.
Please, do not skip the fundamentals of Python and jump to the essentials of Python for Data Science. Remember that Python is a programming language with applications not only in data science but in many fields. Some Python for Data Science courses might skip core Python concepts that will be necessary in the future.
Some of the topics covered in this course that are frequently used in data science are:
Variables & Data Types
Lists, Dictionaries, Tuples, Nested Lists
Functions, Return Statement, If Statements
For Loops, While Loop, Nested Loops
Try / Except, Reading and Writing to Files
Python Interpreter, Modules, Pip Classes
Objects, Object Functions, Inheritance
Plus, there are practical exercises where you would put all the concepts learned into practice. You will build a basic calculator, guessing name, translator, and a multiple-choice quiz. On top of that, the instructor has good knowledge of Python, clear explanations, and engaging delivery.
#2 Python for Data Analysis Course
This one is more like a playlist than a course; however, you will find more useful lectures in this playlist than in some paid courses.
The first 8 videos in the playlist make a 10-hour data analysis course. It starts with the most popular data collection technique that data scientists use to build datasets — web scraping. Then you will learn data analysis libraries such as Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib, and Scikit-learn. On top of that, the playlist includes cool projects that will help you get hands-on experience. All of this is carried out on Jupyter Notebooks, which is data scientists’ computational notebook of choice.
Some of the datasets used in this course to teach the libraries mentioned before are:
So if you want to have fun analyzing Pokemon and FIFA datasets or build a machine-learning model using product review, consider watching this playlist.
I watched the first 8 videos of the playlist and that helped me build a strong foundation on Python for data analysis.
#3 Natural Language Processing Course in Python
This is a short yet useful 2-hour NLP course for anyone interested in the field of Natural Language Processing. NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that allows machines to understand human language. Data scientists use NLP techniques to interpret text data for analysis.
This introduction to NLP covers the following topics:
Pre-processing techniques (tokenization, text normalization, and data cleaning)
Machine learning techniques (topic modeling, word embeddings, and text generation)
Python libraries for NLP (NLTK, TextBlob, spaCy, and gensim)
I like this short course in particular because it’s highly engaging and includes cool exercises like spam email classification and sentiment analysis of tweets. Of course, to do all of this you will need to have at least a basic understanding of data analysis libraries such as Pandas and Scikit-learn.
#4 Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence with Tensorflow 2.0 Course
This is a 7-hour Tensorflow course designed for Python programmers who wish to learn machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) with TensorFlow. TensorFlow is one of the best libraries available for working with Machine Learning in Python. It makes machine learning model building easy for beginners.
In this course, you will find 8 modules that cover fundamental topics in ML & AI. To name a few:
Core Learning Algorithms
Neural Networks with TensorFlow
Deep Computer Vision — Convolutional Neural Networks
Natural Language Processing with RNNs
Reinforcement Learning with Q-Learning
I like this course because the instructor has good knowledge of machine learning and artificial intelligence and has a clear explanation. Also, the course is engaging and contains valuable information and coding examples. All of this makes learning TensowFlow easier.
That’s it! Hope these 4 courses help you enhance your knowledge of Python for data science and AI.