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Experiences

The ISI Chapter

The first semester started on July 20, 2015. The classes were held initially at the Kolmogorov bhavan. Within a month we were given our own classroom in the Satyendra Nath Bose Bhavan.

Kolmogorov

Kolmogorov bhavan, ISI

Our curriculum consisted of 5 subjects. The subjects and the professors involved were:

Statistical inference – Amitava Banerjee

Stochastic processes – Dr. Bimal Roy & Dr. Kishan Chand Gupta

Computing for data sciences – Dr. Sourav Sengupta

Statistical structures in data – Debashish Sengupta

Database Management Systems – Dr. Pinakpani Pal & Amiya Das

By far the stars of the course were the faculty members. It was an honour to interact with a Padma Shree awardee in Dr. Bimal Roy. To be taught on a regular basis by such an esteemed personality was slightly overwhelming and hugely enriching. The sheer brilliance of the man and his way of looking at probability and its applications was an experience difficult to pen down. Dr. Kishan Chand Gupta shared the course and taught Markov Chains.

SN Bhawan

 Satyendra Nath bhavan , ISI Campus

Diligent and sincere, Prof. Debashish Sengupta was the ideal teacher. He covered every topic rigorously starting right with the basics of statistics to the highly complex multivariate analysis. What seemed an easy course initially, became heavily loaded and among the toughest by the time the course came to its completion. Tutorials were held every week to discuss exercise problems.

The jovial Prof. Amitava Banerjee taught us the habit of drawing meaningful inferences out of large volumes of data. Drawing from his vast pool of consultancy experience, he inculcated in us the ability to convert real life business problems into statistical problems. His assignments involved working on datasets and testing hypothesis in the correct way.

Dr. Pinakpani Pal was interactive, and worked hard to ensure that our stay was a comfortable one. His course had 2 parts: the theoretical knowledge of databases, and a hands-on SQL application. He shared the course with Amiya Das, a seasoned professional at Oracle.

The friendly and ever enthusiastic Dr Sourav Sengupta was always approachable and motivated the entire batch in getting accustomed with highly complex ideas. His passion for teaching shone through as he went through the concepts of linear algebra and machine learning algorithms. He organised the course superbly and the web page for his course was among the best resource repositories we could have hoped for.

The invited lectures were top drawer, with experienced professionals coming in to share their insights and recommendations about the field of analytics. Overall the first semester was a learning experience beyond compare and laid a solid foundation on which we can build in our journey towards becoming well-rounded data scientists.

Deshmukh

   Our hostel, Deshmukh Bhavan