This is part two of a series of posts detailing my project to build a model that predicts the outcomes of DotA 2 matches. You can view the GitHub repository for this project here.
At this point in my data science journey, I have completed several Exploratory Data Analyses, Regression models of various kinds, and binary classification problems. All of these things are useful skills for a data scientist, but all of them have been performed using entirely numerical data. In the real world, more and more of the data we collect is in the form of text. It’s important that I learn to deal with these types of data sets if I want to have a well rounded understanding of data science as it applies to real world scenarios.
We all know that kid who coasted through school never needing to study or put in real effort to retain information from classes. The kid who breezed through exams, killed it on the ACT or SAT, then went to college and flamed out. Well, I was that kid. From elementary all the way through High School I never really developed a study habit and it has repeatedly hampered my attempts to learn new skills as an adult.