Continuing with my R training - an update to my continuing education! - ULOG

Fans and followers of mine will recall that I am, using online courses and other materials, teaching myself to program with R. I haven't updated you all on this progress in quite a long time, so when I was thinking about putting a post out tonight, I decided to talk about it and what I have been doing for most of today.

Since I last posted about this, I found a great program on Edx through HarvardX, its a nine course series on Data Science specifically targeting R programming and statistical analysis. I studied statistical analysis quite deeply at university, and so I have a bit of a leg up in these courses.

_{This is my next course}

The courses consist of several series of very concise videos, followed by a series of homework on none other than datacamp. Since I am already a datacamp user, I have been doing much of my aided learning on that platform already this year, there was no learning curve at all for me. In fact, I can use other courses on datacamp to supplement my learning and practice, which makes me feel like I am really getting enough content to learn the material really well.

I am already very happy with how much in R is becoming comfortable for me to use!

_{3 down, 6 to go!}

In order to officially get the final 'certification', I must have verified certificates in all of the courses. You see, these courses are free to take, but if you want a digital certificate, you have to pay money. Luckily, I found edx's financial aid application, and have been having success! They won't let me apply for financial aid on all nine courses at once, but one at a time. So far I have received financial aid in the first 3 courses, and have now applied for the fourth as I get started on it.

According to the site, a student can only receive aid for up to 5 courses in a calendar year, so my brilliant plan is to do four or five courses before the year ends, then be able to apply and finish the others in 2019. This is the difference of paying between 49 and 99 dollars per course and, at the 90 percent discount that financial aid applies, 4.90 - 9.90 per course. If anyone out there is having financial difficulty and wants to get a verified certificate, I would highly recommend this financial aid application linked above.

_{Currently we are deep into statistics, and the math behind them}

All in all I feel as if I continue to make good progress, and I have found a way to not only learn the material I want to but also to earn a certificate from the prestigious Harvard (well, HarvardX) to go along with my learning. I am reviewing statistics, which I learned well but haven't touched in a while, and am reconnecting with my inner student - that is, reestablishing the discipline to sit myself down and learn something without clicking off into the wilds of the internet.

What do you want to learn, or what are you learning? Let me know in the comments! Encouragement is also appreciated!

May God Bless you All with Love and Friendship!