Divergence Academy

Trying to enter the Data Science world with a Master's degree and a few online courses is not quite enough, as it cannot enable a new graduate to think like a domain expert who could help formulate the right questions. Even with the right questions, students like me have to demonstrate the ability to apply the right concept to solve the problem. Divergence Academy's Data Science 60 hr course bridges the gap that students seem to have, between the generic exposure of concepts and the current industry standards and expectations.

This Data Science course spearheaded by Vish and Scott ticked a lot of boxes for me unlike the other data science courses available online. The telling difference was in the way the instructors helped me get my foundations right and gave me the ability to analyze the problems in an effective way. A lot of work went into compiling the course work that is relevant to the current industry standards and the assignments helped me dwell deep into the concepts. I was introduced to some pretty cool data science tools that are being used by the top technology companies. I would recommend this course for anyone looking to get their feet wet in the data science/Machine Learning world.

As an aspiring data scientist and a recent graduate, I had decided to complete numerous data science courses online. I presumed I was quite proficient at data science and even marketed myself to recruiters as one. I could not have been more wrong. Data science is not something which can be learned by conventional means. It needs a certain level of business acumen and several hours of guided teaching. Online courses which claim to teach you data science within a few hours is not even close to enough. Divergence Academy satisfied all my shortcomings. It provided me with the opportunity to learn from and interact with some of the best-established data scientists. I was able to land my first data science job before the course concluded. I would strongly recommend this course to people who are extremely keen on becoming data scientists and are ready to put in the work!

The experience I have here is awesome. Vish does not only cover normal python and ML algorithm but also scala and cloud platform. He also provides a lot of helpful insights about how the industry works and how the data scientists approach the problem. The classmates here are also from many different backgrounds and it is a great opportunity for me to learn from others. I definitely think this 60-hr course is helpful for me.

I took the data science short course. As a no technical background student, I found it is very useful for people who want to get in the industry with a little analysis knowledge. It gave me the knowledge as well as practice of many needed skills for data scientist from the industry prospective. The course focus more on python as well as the most useful statistics theory behind those model. It takes only 6 weeks and I think it is suitable for those people in transit.

I have had the amazing experience and opportunity to take both the Data Science Part-Time course and the Data Science Immersive. There are almost too many great things to say about both but I will try to be brief. Specifically with the Immersive course if I could describe it with one word it would be "hands-on" and I probably need one more word and that would be "caring". Sravan Ankaraju (founder) and Beth (advisor) have done an outstanding job making this course top notch.
Firstly all of the instructors for each module either held at least one if not more than one graduate degree or had 3-4 years industry experience. The hands on part came in as we had daily scrums in the morning to go over what we learned and figure out how to tweak the course if needed. There were also a few speakers that came in from either the DS industry or from a related industry. Divergence Academy also has a huge presence in the Dallas tech community and is also next the Addison Treehouse (co-working space, start-up incubator), thus they hold several tech meet-ups and even more are accessible at the Treehouse. This definitely provides plenty of opportunities for networking and if someone is new to the tech industry then they are great for  getting abreast of the market.
The coursework is intense and does a great job of covering the major topics and algorithms in data science. The result being a can now confidently work my way through the data science process. If you decide to take this course definitely take the pre-coursework material or at least get a good feel for python. Also be prepared for the time commitment not only in class but possibly for your lifestyle. You definitely will not want to miss any classes unless you have to as there is a lot covered each day.
The only improvements I would suggest would be incorporating in a three to five day break. Maybe due to my thirst for knowledge, I would even consider extending some modules or topics covered. Specifically I would have enjoyed doing a bit more in Neo4j.
Lastly they also do a great job of getting you prepared to go out into the workforce. My LinkedIn, resume, and github accounts are outstanding. The aforementioned coupled with the job seeking tactics taught should have me with a new data science job in 90 days or less for sure. If you are considering taking either the weekend or immersive course feel free to contact the academy and they can put you in touch with me. I am happy to share my experience and some of the finer details with you. Cheers!

I really enjoyed this course. I liked the in-class demos/examples to help remember the material.  It was a nice reward for working hard throughout the course. I would recommend this course to those looking into Data Science.

The instructors bring enthusiasm and experience to every lecture that they give. They  are very approachable and understanding, and always keep an open line of communication with their students.

I was part of the 17th cohort for the Data Science Part-Time / 60-Hour Weekend course at Divergence Academy.  As an aspiring data science professional, I am so glad that I took this course under the tutelage of Scott Love and Vish Puttagunta.  Both Scott and Vish taught the course material in a fashion that emphasized less on theory and more on practice, which satisfies the expectations of industry.  I especially liked how Vish made linear and logistic regression, neural networks, and Naive Bayes relatable, by conceptualizing and teaching these supervised machine learning techniques in a human and comprehensible fashion.  Scott and Vish also shared their insights of the industry's expectations towards data scientists and stressed the art of communicating data findings to domain experts, external customers, and management in their specific language.  Both instructors always sustained my attention throughout each five-hour course day, unlike online data science courses where I can easily daydream while watching 15 to 20-minute lecture videos.  The Jupyter Notebooks provided in this course are full of valuable Python code to reference for data science projects.  My classmates and I also got our hands dirty with the latest tools like Deep Cognition and Spark.  The only improvements that I would incorporate into this class is to commit some time to web scraping, regularization of regression with lasso and ridge regression, and time-series analysis.

Took the 6 week-end Datascience course at Divergence Academy. Vish Puttagunta (Instructor) is one of the best instructor in dfw area and his approach & the curriculum he built towards this course is perfect. The course is not just theory or a bunch of slides its completely hands-on course every week where I got to know about building  models in Python Pandas, Spark, Scala, Statistical modelling & deep learning techniques at a scale with cutting edge cloud tools like google collab & Microsoft Azure. Highly recommended course for someone who is looking into a full time career in DataScience or if they want to bring the value to company by communicating with c level executives and build a data science center of excellency team.

Divergence Academy was really helpful for me to understand the bigger picture of data science. Compared to online courses, listening from the instructor (Viswanath), who has a lot of experience on various data science projects with lots of companies, definitely helps you to understand what kind of problems you might encounter as a data scientist and what tools are available to use. Data science is a field where you need to bring information from various fields together. Divergence Academy is the place where you learn it!

I attended Data Science immersive course. 
The course is a High-quality course, every week content
was very interesting. We learned so much. 

We used many different tools, Big Data, spark, hive, SQL, pig, 
Statistical Modeling, Machine Learning, Azure, AzureML, created web services, 
used Tableau, Python, Pandas, Sickitlearn, too many to list them all. 

You have to be commited, course was 9 to 6 and some weeks you 
are expected to complete assignments after hours or on the 
weekends. This is all worthy. 
    For some people it was very challenging, it depends on if you have
been a developer before, but nobody left the course. 

   Instructors were great. I could not ask for better instructors, specially Sravan. 
  
    They also help me with my resume and prepare my portfolio. 
It is a very complete course and even better than what I expected. 

  I highly recommend Data Science Immersive course at
Divergence Academy. 

Learned a lot, not only about Data Science and its ecosystem, but also about myself and my capacity to assimilate. This 12-week course built on what I knew and cultivated new ways to arrive at the right answers by asking the right questions, about the data being analyzed.

The instructors and peers in the class made the classes enjoyable and challenging at the same time.

Over the summer of 2016, I spent months looking for bootcamps related to Data Science in Dallas, TX.  The closest ones were located in Austin, but then I was able to find Divergence Academy. One of the few places in the DFW metropolitan area that offers a full-time Data Science course. 

I took the Data Science Immersive course from September 2017 to December 2017.  The course was incredible. The curriculum was  well planned.  From Monday until Friday  starting at 9am to 6pm. This 12 week course is intense, but well worth it. The Instructors were incredible in the depth of knowledge they have, and were able to share with us.

I recommend this course for anyone wanting to skill-up and advance their careers as Data Scientists. 

Earlier this year I learned about the Divergence Academy from Beth Lahaie. At the time I was looking to break into the Data Science field, so I decided to research the school further. The 6-week beginner level data science class proved to be a wonderful foundation into the world of data science. My instructor, Sravan Ankaraju, greatly contributed to my enjoyment of the course. He is personable, and completely devoted to ensuring that his students are successful. His passion for teaching radiated and his personable approach encouraged interaction.

The structure of the class complimented Sravan’s style nicely.  Each of the five hours of class passed quickly with his easy way of holding your attention as he imparted knowledge on relevant industry topics sprinkled with interview tips.  The classes were very hands-on with real life applications. During the breaks from instruction, we all gathered around a table to eat together, creating a warmth and camaraderie where we felt less like students and more like family. 

Sravan patiently explained difficult concepts in an engaging manner. He regularly made himself available outside of class, and consistently requested student feedback on ways to enhance the learning process, then immediately put to use the information he received.

I walked away from the course equipped, having firmly grasped machine learning techniques and big data framework concepts.

If you are contemplating entering the data science career path or already established and want to grow your skill-set and are seeking an option outside of a traditional school or degree program; I highly recommend Divergence Academy. The plethora of course offerings cater to varied levels.  Entering as a beginner, I left with a solid foundation from which to launch into the next phase of my data science career. 

As CEO of a financial trading company I found myself  needing the skills of Machine learning to keep our company out in front of the competition.. I went to Divergence Academy and met with Sravan . After explaining what I was wanting to accomplish he designed an entire course program that encompassed the Divergence Academy cirriculum with an emphasis on my goals, along with a schedule that would work around mine. My coding skills were lacking to say the least but Sravan went out of his way to catch me up. Im about a quater way through the course and were already working in the Intergrated Developement Enviroment. The "Big Picture" is becoming more and more in focus with each class..Sravan has a unique way of conveying information..a real teaching skill...and he geniuely cares about each of his students individually...He has really taken the intimidation factor out of the whole proccess. It was a great decision to enrolling in D.A...and I can already see that fusing Machine Learning with our current buisness model is going to one of the best buisness decisions weve made...Its already having a positive efffect just 4 weeks into the course! Ill write another review once Ive finished the course... but if your at all thinking about learning "Machine Learning" or have a buisness that you feel can benefit from it...then Divergence Academy is the place your looking for...If you have questions about Machine Learning and / or how your career or buisness can benefit from it ,give Sravan a call ..He's easy to talk too and I havent asked a question yet he couldnt answer. If you enroll in the course there is alot of information thats gonna come your way..but if your committed Sravan will personally see to it that you understand that information and how to use it..."I really cant say enough good" about the academy , the cirriculumn or its founder...."5 STARS" across the board!!!

John K.

Halo Trading LLC

I work as a consultant and have solid programming skills with several languages. I am mostly self-taught and unlikely to take a course at school. However, I wanted to learn Spark quickly to compliment my database and data integration skills. After hearing Sravan speak at the DFW Python Meetup I became aware of Divergence Academy. I thought a data science academy in Dallas, great! I was prepared to travel out west for the training. But after researching I decided to stay local and sign up. 

How did it go? Let me say, you start with your laptop and end with a Spark cluster running on AWS inside a VM residing on your machine. In the process you cover all stages of science a pipeline from acquire to storytelling and the tools used to perform each step. By the end of this course you're ready to develop solutions using Spark. I recall learning about Spark data frames in this course. If you have a SQL, R, or Python background here is the point it just clicks. Sravan's teaching style and the hands-on lessons facilitate learning. I've taken two courses at Divergence Academy already and currently enrolled in the adaptive program.

Most of tools used in Machine Learning today are open source. All the lectures you ever need to know are in YouTube. So, "why pay?" was the thought I had in late 2014. The problem is not the lack of free information, it is the abundance of it beyond my comprehension. Where do you start? Probability? Statistics? Linear Algebra? Neural Networks? Hadoop? Spark? TensorFlow? How are any of these connected to each other. Where do I start? Which concepts form the core foundation, and which ones can you build on? Where do you go next?

I spent good part of 2015 doing on-line machine learning courses. Though I was learning some good concepts, it was difficult getting a good idea of where the industry is today and where it is heading to the next few years. This is key to getting a job.

I couldn't leave my job, so I joined Data Science Adaptive course. Sravan worked with me to first understand what my background is (Signal Processing and Linux Software Development). We first set out where we want to be in 6 months and carefully broke it down into monthly and weekly goals. The homeworks were spot on and to the point. Within the first 3 months, I could quickly connect the Statistics concepts to the DSP Algorithms I implemented earlier in my career.

As a Data Scientist in AT&T, I look back at the 6 months and honestly say, there was not a single homework that was unnecessary, there was not a single article that I thought was a waste of my time. I slowed down to absorb some concepts, taking select classes in Khan Academy and YouTube as needed, I sped up when I thought I can build on the basics. Sravan also helped me steer clear of distractions from time to time to get me back on track.

I can honestly say I could not have done it in such a short time without Divergence Academy. Also special thanks to Beth Lahaie who has been very helpful in building up my network and arranging DFW Big Data and DFW Data Science Meetups.