Upon joining the platform, students receive all 350+ Data Science and Machine Learning courses hosted on the DataCamp platform along with 10,000+ exercises and 75+ projects which are perfect for building a portfolio.
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What is DataCamp? — A Brief Introduction
DataCamp is an online data science education platform that teaches a large magnitude of data science topics while focusing on both Python and R as the primary programming languages.
The platform was first founded in 2013 when co-founder/CEO, Jonathan Cornelissen, got inspired by Starter League (now acquired by Full Stack Academy) which was a 3-month coding bootcamp for new programmers. After going through the bootcamp himself, Jonathan went on to create a similar kind of learning experience for data enthusiasts by founding DataCamp.
Today, DataCamp has over 6 million monthly active users and is one of the largest online data science education platforms out there (if not the largest). You can sign up to the platform for free or through a paid monthly/annual subscription plan.
The free plan allows you access to some free DataCamp courses but you can only view the first lesson for the majority of the courses on the platform. On the other hand, the paid monthly/annual subscription plan is where you can actually start seeing the value for the buck since it unlocks the entire platform for you.
Who is DataCamp for?
The first question most people seem to ask when looking to joining DataCamp (including us at the start) is, “Who is DataCamp for?” — is it for a beginner-level enthusiast or a working-class professional?
The truth is, the platform is highly tailored towards beginners as well as intermediate-level students/professionals. The format of the entire platform in itself is made such that any general user can sit through the courses without feeling overwhelmed since each lesson is only about 2–10 minutes long.
Plus, there are interactive coding exercises and hint mechanisms that make it very easy to apply theoretical knowledge in practice for the given skill levels. However, this is something even senior data scientists are fond of since the interactiveness allows the learner to be really focused during the lessons for the coding exercises.
Detail Overview of DataCamp
Till now you know that DataCamp is a data science education platform and is made for beginners/intermediate data science enthusiasts. Now, let us give you an overview of the entire DataCamp platform.
DataCamp breaks down its education material in the following hierarchy to define a user’s learning experience as shown in the image below.
Looking at the hierarchy from a bird’s eye view, DataCamp groups more than 1000+ data science chapters into 350+ courses and further groups those courses into 10+ Career Tracks and 50+ Skill Tracks. That’s a lot!
Now, let’s understand what all of these components have to offer from an ant’s eye view:
a. DataCamp Career/Skill Tracks
DataCamp Career/Skill Tracks are tailored-made programs that help you excel in a certain career or a certain skill respectively.
In the career track, you can find tracks for careers such as Machine Learning Scientist (our favorite), Python Programmer, Data Analyst with Python, etc. These tracks typically contain over 60+ hours of video materials + coding exercises and are well-thought-out to help you excel in the career of your choice. You can have a look at all of the available career tracks here: View Career Tracks.
In the skill track, you can find tracks for skills such as Data Manipulation, Data Visualization, Statistics Fundamentals, Time Series with R, etc. These tracks typically contain over 20+ hours of video materials + coding exercises and help you excel in the skill of your choice. You can have a look at all of the available career tracks here: View Skill Tracks.
b. DataCamp Courses
As we’ve mentioned before, DataCamp has a catalog of over 350+ courses on the platform. These courses are taught by in-house as well as partner instructors from various organizations such as Kaggle, University of Washington, Anaconda, DataRobot, etc. You can view a full list of the instructors here: View DataCamp Instructors.
These courses are typically made up of 4–6 chapters and are often taught by a single instructor with each course spanning about 4 hours in length. You can view all of the available DataCamp Courses here: View DataCamp Courses.
c. DataCamp Chapters
A chapter in DataCamp contains video tutorials and coding exercises. These chapters are created in a way that a single specific data science topic is taught in its entirety.
The length of a chapter varies between 30 minutes to 1 hour+ since you have to perform coding exercises as you learn through video tutorials.
Unique Proprietary Benefits Provided by DataCamp
When you join DataCamp, you not only receive access to the video tutorials and coding exercises provided by DataCamp but also to practice sessions, project tutorials, and signal assessments.
a. DataCamp Practise Sessions
DataCamp Practise Sessions are exactly what they sound like — they are a place where you can test out your knowledge.
These practice sessions provide unique challenges with time limits in place (or not) based on the thing you want to practice. This is a great way to learn and is certainly a unique offering by DataCamp.
b. DataCamp Project Tutorials
On top of the vast library of courses, DataCamp also provides a large array of data science project tutorials (more than 75+ to be a little more specific).
These projects can either be guided or unguided, i.e. you can take hints along the way or do them on your own. Either way, the value provided by these projects is highly valuable since a lot of employers look for portfolio projects in case you are a beginner data-science enthusiast.
c. DataCamp Signal Assessments
Yep! You can also assess your knowledge on DataCamp using DataCamp Assessments
Each DataCamp Signal Assessments are unique to the platform and you can actually code your way through the assessments, unlike regular MCQs. We definitely enjoyed ourselves assessing our knowledge on various skills since the questions were complex yet intuitive if you’ve learned the lessons well.
Our Review — Definitely worth an annual subscription!
We’re already in our 6+ months of subscription with DataCamp and the reason is simple — the platform is a great place for beginner and intermediate data science enthusiasts to learn data science. The pricing at DataCamp is affordable and you certainly get the value out of your subscription.
Here’s the link to joining DataCamp: Join DataCamp.