
Ask HN: Data science bootcamps false claim - atulcst
How these data science bootcamps claim that they can teach a person data science who don&#x27;t even know programming. I would suggest there should be a standard specified by industry experts and every bootcamp has to follow it. Its really sad to see how these bootcamps teach shit on the name of data science and make fool of people&#x27;s money.
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smt88
> _a standard specified by industry experts and every bootcamp has to follow
> it_

How would anyone force them to follow it? The standard would have to be
heavily marketed to prospective students, which would apply pressure on
bootcamps to follow the standard. But that would cost money, and who would pay
for that?

This is the kind of thing that historically snowballs into a huge mess, and
then the government ends up regulating it because there's no way the market
will.

See also: accreditation of schools, regulation of food-safety and food-quality
practices, etc.

You can also see an industry where the government _hasn 't_ regulated that
much, which is organic food in the US. That's a huge disaster, where the
organic buzzword is applied to a wide variety of products with a wide variety
of histories. Consumers have no idea what they're really buying.

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minimaxir
The data science bootcamps usually teach statistical programming. (e.g.
numPy/SciKit), which is sufficient.

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atulcst
So you are saying I can build google search engine if I learn python :) I am
pointing that people fooled by these bootcamp, which teach that if you know
pyhton and some numpy etc you can become a data scientist. Which is hardly
true.

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minimaxir
Ideally you are not building a Google search engine while employed as a data
scientist.

You're hitting on No True Scotsman in the sense that real Data Scientists must
be programming experts. Granted, a strong focus in linear algebra and
algorithms makes life easier, but keep in mind that many, many Data Analysts
in Fortune 500 companies use Excel as their primary tool.

~~~
atulcst
I am trying to point out that data science can't be learned in bootcamp. It
need at least 2-3 years of work to be employable in industry as data
scientist. And what the bootcamps teach in class is pretty basic which anybody
can learn for free.

Bootcamp misguide people by telling them that data science is easy and you can
learn in 3 months by paying big bucks to them. In a way its kind of fraud.
Think about it if you go to trader's joe and you ask for full toned organic
milk and what you get is regular fat free milk (and we don't even know if
there is a world where regular fat free milk is free).

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jacalata
You want to claim fraud, then you need to come here with some data showing
that the people who go through these camps do not get jobs as data scientists.

