How did it go?

I attended the Austin Data Science Python Meetup, hosted on November 15 on the Meetup platform. To begin with, this was my first time attending an online meetup of this kind. And I must say, it was a fantastic learning experience. I was nervous at first, but as the meetup progressed, I became more at ease with it. The entire purpose of the meetup was to explore any Python library of our choosing and create some value from it. As someone interested in entering the field of Data Science, I chose the library ‘pandas,’ which I had heard a lot about. Pandas is an open-source library in Python which provides high-performance data structures and data analysis tools that are ready to use. Pandas is a popular data science and data analytics module that runs on top of NumPy.

What did you learn?

The meetup host gave us a list of websites where we could find some really useful datasets. So I went to Kaggle and downloaded a housing dataset that included features such as bedrooms, bathrooms, balconies, area (in sqft), and several others. I learned a lot about dataframes, including but not limited to:

• What a Pandas DataFrame is and how to create one
• Data organized in two dimensions, rows and columns
• How to access, modify, add, sort, filter, and delete data
• How to handle missing values
• How to quickly visualize data

Would you find value in this kind of event after class?

Yes. Two things stood out to me during the event:

• Networking: Events like these allow you to network with professionals in your chosen industry. During this meetup, I made connections with Data Analysts and Data Scientists from major Austin tech companies.

• Value of work in the industry: Another thing I explored, and something that I was never taught in academia, was the importance of what you’re doing in the industry and the scale to which it is actually done in real-life projects, which I learned about at the meetup after speaking with several Data Scientists. In short, I do believe that events like this will add value to my career and that I will always learn something out of them.

How was the experience different from your expectations?

I was nervous before the meetup because I was afraid I wouldn’t learn much because I would be there with some of the industry’s most experienced and smart people. However, it turned out to be very different from what I had anticipated. I not only learned about Pandas, but also about other libraries used by professionals in the AI/ML industry, such as Sci-Kit Learn, TensorFlow, and PyTorch.

Could you see yourself becomming a member of a professional community like this in the future?

Without a doubt! I understand how difficult it is for young and inexperienced students like myself to break into the tech industry and land our dream jobs. As a result, I will do my best to share my knowledge and guide anyone who may require my assistance, particularly in the Data Science sector.