VOOZH about

URL: https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2021/04/step-by-step-guide-to-become-a-data-scientist-from-scratch/

⇱ Become A Data Scientist | Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Data Scientist


India's Most Futuristic AI Conference Is Back – Bigger, Sharper, Bolder

  • d
  • :
  • h
  • :
  • m
  • :
  • s

Reading list

Exclusive Data Science Roadmap 2025 [Step-wise Guide]

Pranshu Sharma Last Updated : 06 Dec, 2024
5 min read

Introduction

In this step-by-step guide to becoming a Data Scientist, we’ll walk you through the essential skills you need to learn. To acquire these skills, various resources are available, such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), YouTube Channels, and Blog Pages, which offer comprehensive learning materials. Additionally, you can explore Data Science Community Websites like Kaggle, Driven Data, and Analytics Vidhya, which provide opportunities to gain practical experience with datasets and invaluable insights into diverse Machine Learning techniques. By leveraging these resources, you can embark on a rewarding journey toward mastering the art of Data Science.

 This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon.

What Is Data Science?

Data Science is all aboutusing various techniques, algorithms to analyze large amounts of datasets (both structured & Unstructured), to extract useful data insights, thus applying them in various business domains.

Why there’s a demand for Data Scientists?

Data is being generated day by day at a massive rate and in order to process such massive data sets, Big Firms, Companies are hunting for good data scientists to extract valuable data insights from these data sets and using them for various business strategies, models, plans

1. Learn Python

The First and Foremost Step Towards Data Science should learning be a programming language ( i.e. Python). Python is the most common coding language, used by the Majority of Data Scientist, because of its simplicity, versatil,ity and being pre-equipped with powerful libraries ( like NumPy, SciPy, and Pandas) useful in data analysis and other aspects in Data Science. Python is an open-source language and supports various libraries.

Resource:

2. Learn Statistics

If Data Science is a language, then statistics is basically the grammar. Statistics is basically the method of analyzing, interpretation of large data sets. When it comes to data analysis and gathering insights, statistics is as noteworthy as air to us. Statistics help us understand the hidden details from large datasets

Resource:

3. Data Collection

This is one of the key and important steps in the field of Data Science. This skill involves knowledge of various tools to import data from both local systems, as CSV files, and scraping data from websites, using beautifulsoup python library. Scrapping can also be API-based. Data collection can be managed with knowledge of Query Language or ETL pipelines in Python

Resource:

4. Data Cleaning

This is the Step where most of the time is being spent as a Data Scientist. Data cleaning is all about obtaining the data, fit for doing work& analysis, by removing unwanted values, missing values, categorical values, outliers, and wrongly submitted records, from the Raw form of Data. Data Cleaning is very important as real-world data is messy in nature and achieving it with help of various python libraries(Pandas and NumPy)is really important for an aspirant Data Scientist

Resource:

5.  Acquaintance With EDA( Exploratory Data Analysis)

EDA( Exploratory data analysis) is the most important aspect in the vast field of data science. It includes analyzing various data, variables, various data patterns, trends and extracting useful insights from them with help of various graphical and statistic l methods. EDA identifies various pattern which Machine learning algorithm might fail to identify. It includes all Data Manipulation, Analysis, and Visualization.

Resource:

6. Machine Learning & Deep Learning

Machine learning is the core skill required to be a Data Scientist. Machine learning is used to build various predictive models, classification models, etc., and is being used By big firms, Companies to Optimize their planning as per the predictions. For example Car Price prediction

πŸ‘ Image

Deep Learning on the other hand is and an advanced version of Machine Learning which deploys the use of Neural Network, a framework that combines various machine learning algorithms for solving various tasks, for training data. Various Neural networks are recurrent neural network (RNN) or a convolutional neural network (CNN) etc

For Example: Face Recognition

Resources:

7. Learn Deploying of ML model

Deployment is basically the process of making your Machine Learning Model available to end-users for use. This is achieved by the integration of the model with various existing production environments thus implementing the practical use of the ML model for various Business solutions.

There are many services for deploying your ML model like Flask, Pythoneverywhere, MLOps , Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Heroku, etc

Resources:

8. Real-World Testing

Testing and Validation of the Machine Learning Model after Deployment Should Be done In order to check its effectiveness and accuracy. Testing is an Important Step In Data Science for keeping the efficiency and effectiveness of the ML model In check.

There is Various Type Of Testing like A/B, AAB Testing, etc.

9. Exploring and Practicing datasets on Kaggle, Analytics Vidhya

πŸ‘ Kaggle

World’s Largest Data Science Communities like Kaggle, Analytics Vidhya is very helpful for getting in touch with various datasets and therefore can be used for practicing Various Data analysis techniques, machine learning algorithms. Competitions being held in these communities are also useful for sharpening the skills of data science, thus helping us to achieve our goal of becoming proficient in Data Science faster.

10. Analytical Curiosity 

The data science field is a field that is evolving at a higher pace, therefore it requires inbuilt curiosity to explore more about the field, regularly updating and learning various skills & techniques.

This is the main skill that will always help us maintaining, updating new skills & concepts, thus preventing us from lagging behind various Data Science technological advancements.

11. Non-Technical Skills

  • Non-Technical includes Teamwork, Communication Skills, Task management, Business understanding, etc
  • Teamwork plays an important role while delivering the result to the firms, companies we are working as data scientists.
  • Communication skills allow us to express our technical ideas, concepts to various non-technical staff/ authorities of the Firm.
  • Task Management involves proper management and planning for delivering the solution.
  • Business understanding/ acumen or the understanding about the industry we are working in is very important for various analyses and effective solutions for the problems in those industries.

The media shown in this article are not owned by Analytics Vidhya and is used at the Author’s discretion. 

Aspiring Data Scientist | M.TECH, CSE at NIT DURGAPUR

Login to continue reading and enjoy expert-curated content.

Free Courses

Generative AI - A Way of Life

Explore Generative AI for beginners: create text and images, use top AI tools, learn practical skills, and ethics.

Getting Started with Large Language Models

Master Large Language Models (LLMs) with this course, offering clear guidance in NLP and model training made simple.

Building LLM Applications using Prompt Engineering

This free course guides you on building LLM apps, mastering prompt engineering, and developing chatbots with enterprise data.

Improving Real World RAG Systems: Key Challenges & Practical Solutions

Explore practical solutions, advanced retrieval strategies, and agentic RAG systems to improve context, relevance, and accuracy in AI-driven applications.

Microsoft Excel: Formulas & Functions

Master MS Excel for data analysis with key formulas, functions, and LookUp tools in this comprehensive course.

Responses From Readers

Vaibhav Nahar

Short and to the point! It was a good read, would like to know more in detail.

I thought this course introduced the topic of data science very well. I think I have a much better idea how to describe data science and common terms associated with the field (like machine learning).

Summer python

Thanks for sharing! This website is very informative. I appreciate this website. How long does it take to become a data scientist from scratch?

Flagship Programs

GenAI Pinnacle Program| GenAI Pinnacle Plus Program| AI/ML BlackBelt Program| Agentic AI Pioneer Program

Free Courses

Generative AI| DeepSeek| OpenAI Agent SDK| LLM Applications using Prompt Engineering| DeepSeek from Scratch| Stability.AI| SSM & MAMBA| RAG Systems using LlamaIndex| Building LLMs for Code| Python| Microsoft Excel| Machine Learning| Deep Learning| Mastering Multimodal RAG| Introduction to Transformer Model| Bagging & Boosting| Loan Prediction| Time Series Forecasting| Tableau| Business Analytics| Vibe Coding in Windsurf| Model Deployment using FastAPI| Building Data Analyst AI Agent| Getting started with OpenAI o3-mini| Introduction to Transformers and Attention Mechanisms

Popular Categories

AI Agents| Generative AI| Prompt Engineering| Generative AI Application| News| Technical Guides| AI Tools| Interview Preparation| Research Papers| Success Stories| Quiz| Use Cases| Listicles

Generative AI Tools and Techniques

GANs| VAEs| Transformers| StyleGAN| Pix2Pix| Autoencoders| GPT| BERT| Word2Vec| LSTM| Attention Mechanisms| Diffusion Models| LLMs| SLMs| Encoder Decoder Models| Prompt Engineering| LangChain| LlamaIndex| RAG| Fine-tuning| LangChain AI Agent| Multimodal Models| RNNs| DCGAN| ProGAN| Text-to-Image Models| DDPM| Document Question Answering| Imagen| T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer)| Seq2seq Models| WaveNet| Attention Is All You Need (Transformer Architecture) | WindSurf| Cursor

Popular GenAI Models

Llama 4| Llama 3.1| GPT 4.5| GPT 4.1| GPT 4o| o3-mini| Sora| DeepSeek R1| DeepSeek V3| Janus Pro| Veo 2| Gemini 2.5 Pro| Gemini 2.0| Gemma 3| Claude Sonnet 3.7| Claude 3.5 Sonnet| Phi 4| Phi 3.5| Mistral Small 3.1| Mistral NeMo| Mistral-7b| Bedrock| Vertex AI| Qwen QwQ 32B| Qwen 2| Qwen 2.5 VL| Qwen Chat| Grok 3

AI Development Frameworks

n8n| LangChain| Agent SDK| A2A by Google| SmolAgents| LangGraph| CrewAI| Agno| LangFlow| AutoGen| LlamaIndex| Swarm| AutoGPT

Data Science Tools and Techniques

Python| R| SQL| Jupyter Notebooks| TensorFlow| Scikit-learn| PyTorch| Tableau| Apache Spark| Matplotlib| Seaborn| Pandas| Hadoop| Docker| Git| Keras| Apache Kafka| AWS| NLP| Random Forest| Computer Vision| Data Visualization| Data Exploration| Big Data| Common Machine Learning Algorithms| Machine Learning| Google Data Science Agent
πŸ‘ Av Logo White

Continue your learning for FREE

Forgot your password?
πŸ‘ Av Logo White

Enter OTP sent to

Edit

Wrong OTP.

Enter the OTP

Resend OTP

Resend OTP in 45s

πŸ‘ Popup Banner
πŸ‘ AI Popup Banner