My Journey as a Data Science Scholar

4 min readSep 16, 2020

Is it true that an opportunity knocks only once?

Let me share with you how did I got here.

It was September 18, 2019 when I first got interested in becoming an FTW Foundation Scholar. I am glad that I have made it to the final step of the application process which is the face-to-face presentation & interviews. Though I was not selected to receive the scholarship at that time, that journey is something I am proud of.

Fast forward: June 8, 2020

I am so happy that I opted in via FTW Foundation’s website. I got updated to their Scholarship Program for this year. It encouraged me to re-apply. And finally, I did it!

So, back to the question…

Is it true that an opportunity knocks only once?

I can say that based on my experience, opportunity always knocks with FTW! It is always up to us on how we deal with it. Indeed, hard work pays but only if done at the right time and with the right attitude. Timing is everything!

Getting started with Spyder

What is Spyder?

According to Spyder Website, “Spyder is a powerful scientific environment written in Python which features a unique combination of the advanced editing, analysis, debugging, and profiling functionality of a comprehensive development tool with the data exploration, interactive execution, deep inspection, and beautiful visualization capabilities of a scientific package.”

This video discussed the following topics:

(1) Spyder IDE Intro
(2) Different Sections
(3) Changing Working directory
(4) File Explorer
(5) Variable Explorer
(6) Changing Themes
(7) PEP8 Code Analysis
(8) Kernel Restart

Let me share with you how I code-along!

First, launch Spyder from the Anaconda Navigator.

Once you click “Launch” you will automatically be directed to the software.

Welcome to Spyder! If you are new to it, you could see and read the tutorial on the first quadrant. Are you excited to run Python in Spyder IDE?

In the new file on the left, type or copy/paste print("Hello, peeps!"). Run your first program by clicking the triangle Run button.

You can see your program’s output in the bottom right Console pane. To save your first script, click on file then save.

Next thing I am going to introduce with you is the Variable Explorer.

The Variable Explorer allows you to interactively browse and manage the objects generated running your code.

The Variable Explorer gives you information on the name, size, type and value of each object. To modify a scalar variable, like an number, string or boolean, simply double click it in the pane and type its new value.

Now let’s try extracting our data.

Our first line of code will be to get our data set into a DataFrame object (DataSeerGrabPrizeData.csv) Enter the file location of your .csv file into the pd.read_csv(“file”) function, then click the green play button to run the program. Click on the variable explorer, and you should see a new DataFrame object of size.

The “import pandas” portion now includes the entire library for us to use. The “as pd” portion is to use pd as a shortcut when calling the library functions. So now we don’t type out pandas.(function_name) everytime, but instead pd.(function_name).

Finally, to make your environment more enjoyable to use, click on the Preferences icon then go to Appearance and select Syntax highlighting theme. Enjoy Spyder!