Twitter as a Tool for Learning?

As you set out to learn a new skill, it’s often to difficult to pinpoint where you need to begin. Many times we do not know what we don’t know. Having read many articles discussing the skills needed for successful Data Analysts, I know tools like SQL, R, and Python are heavily used in the field. While typically thought of as a platform for memes and celebrity gossip, Twitter is one of the best tools for learning. Blogs, Data Scientists, and even Podcasts use Twitter to share articles and resources. Below, I’ve listed some of my favorite Twitter handles and a few of their tweets that you may find helpful.

@Rbloggers
R bloggers is a blog (surprise!) compiled of posts from R Users with skill levels ranging from n00b to full-fledged Data Scientists. They share tons of info including articles on getting started with R, notices when courses go on sale, and articles on interesting data sets and how they’re being used such as public bike usage. They’ll even throw out a few notes for job postings as those come up as well.

@hadleywickham
Hadley Wickham, Chief Data Scientist at RStudio, is huge in the R Community. He is the author of many packages that are a part of the tidyverse including ggplot2, readr, and possibly my favorite package, dplyr. Hadley can be found answering questions, retweeting others’ posts, and sharing articles as well. Here’s a tweet on keyboard shortcuts for RStudio.

@JennyBryan
Jenny Bryan, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia and Software Engineer at RStudio, is another great follow. Similar to Hadley, she can be found answering questions and retweeting other useful stuff. Some of her work includes the googledrive and readxl packages. Readxl is quite helpful when dealing with funky excel formats and writing out to excel workbooks. This a great video of Jenny demoing some of readxl’s functions.

@TalkPython
For the Python side of things, Talk Python is a podcast hosted by Michael Kennedy. The podcast covers a range of topics including Paths to becoming a Data Scientist, Lessons from Dev Job Interviews, and Machine Learning at the Large Hadron Collider. He’ll also retweet and share others’ pythonic articles like this. If you’re feeling nerdy, definitely check out the podcast for a good listen.

@Pybites
I stumbled across Pybites after seeing a few retweets from Talk Python. A week or so later, the guys from Pybites were on the show. Julian is a newer Python programmer and shares resources catered to the rookies. He put together an awesome Flask for Beginners on Udemy that I found quite valuable. Pybites also shares a Twitter Digest that covers Python bits from the week.

Welp, these are just a few of the many data related Twitter accounts that exist. If you can sprinkle in some nerd stuff between memes and Lavar Ball takes, you might learn something new. And after checking a few of these, I’m sure the algorithm will detect that you’re into nerdy stuff and start suggesting other nerdy stuff to you as well. Please share anything interesting you find!