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Math Skills required for Data Science Aspirants

The knowledge of this essential math is particularly important for newcomers arriving at data science from other professions, Specially whosoever wanted to transit their career in to Data Science field (Aspirant). Because mathematics is backbone of Data science , you must have knowledge to deal with data, behind any algorithm mathematics plays an important role. Here am going to iclude some of the topics which is Important if you dont have maths background. 

1. Statistics and Probability
2. Calculus (Multivariable)
3. Linear Algebra
4.  Methods for Optimization
5. Numerical Analysis

1. Statistics and Probability

Statistics and Probability is used for visualization of features, data preprocessing, feature transformation, data imputation, dimensionality reduction, feature engineering, model evaluation, etc.

Here are the topics you need to be familiar with: Mean, Median, Mode, Standard deviation/variance, Correlation coefficient and the covariance matrix, Probability distributions (Binomial, Poisson, Normal), p-value, Baye’s Theorem (Precision, Recall, Positive Predictive Value, Negative Predictive Value, Confusion Matrix, ROC Curve), Central Limit Theorem, R_2 score, Mean Square Error (MSE), A/B Testing, Monte Carlo Simulation

2. Multivariable Calculus

Most machine learning models are built with a dataset having several features or predictors. Hence, familiarity with multivariable calculus is extremely important for building a machine learning model.

Here are the topics you need to be familiar with: Functions of several variables; Derivatives and gradients; Step function, Sigmoid function, Logit function, ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit) function; Cost function; Plotting of functions; Minimum and Maximum values of a function

3. Linear Algebra

Linear algebra is the most important math skill in machine learning. A data set is represented as a matrix. Linear algebra is used in data preprocessing, data transformation, dimensionality reduction, and model evaluation.

Here are the topics you need to be familiar with: Vectors; Norm of a vector; Matrices; Transpose of a matrix; The inverse of a matrix; The determinant of a matrix; Trace of a Matrix; Dot product; Eigenvalues; Eigenvectors

4. Optimization Methods

Most machine learning algorithms perform predictive modeling by minimizing an objective function, thereby learning the weights that must be applied to the testing data in order to obtain the predicted labels.

Here are the topics you need to be familiar with: Cost function/Objective function; Likelihood function; Error function; Gradient Descent Algorithm and its variants (e.g. Stochastic Gradient Descent Algorithm)

5. Numerical Analysis

Its very good to have numerical analysis knowledge like time series analysis , forecasting

Best Youtube channel to learn:


Best Blog to read :

https://towardsdatascience.com/

 
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