Data science (DS) and Machine Learning (ML) at Stellenbosch University

Last updated: 14 October 2020
Contact me if you have information to post or if you're interested in studying DS.

Courses at SU

• BCom Mathematical Sciences with focal area Data Science
• Bachelor in Data Science (to be offered from 2021 by Statistics and Actuarial Science)
• MSc in ML and AI (to be offered from 2021 by Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and E&E)
• Postgraduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering with focus on Data Science

Research groups at SU

• Maties Machine Learning (MML)
• Neural Engineering Research Venture (NERV)
• School of Data Science and Computational Thinking
• Prof Willie Brink (Applied Mathematics): ML and computer vision
• Dr Herman Kamper (E&E): ML for speech and vision
• Prof Steve Kroon (Computer Science): Probabilistic models and neural networks

Python resources

The best thing you can do if you want to dabble or work in DS is to learn Python. There are two different versions (forks) of the language, v2 and v3 (learn v3), and many IDEs (PyCharm, Anaconda, etc.). There's also a nice notebook-type frontend called Jupyter.

• Jupyter installation manual
• Project Jupyter instructions
• Useful online book: Python for Everybody [LibreTexts version | trinket version]
• Official Python page
• Python's beginners guide
• Basic Python tutorials
• DataCamp's free course on Python
• Introduction to Python with Jupyter by Maxime Sangnier, Paris University
• Plotting in Python by Maxime Sangnier, Paris University
• Scientific computing in Python by Maxime Sangnier, Paris University
• Colaboratory or Colab - Google's cloud version of Jupyter
• SU Python group. Do we have one? If not, propose yourself to start one.

Conferences and schools

• Deep Learning Indaba: Africa's annual ML conference
• Deep Learning IndabaX: National satellite events
• AIMS MSc on ML: Africa's first MSc in ML
• Africa Data Science Intensive: DS school organised by AIMS

ML/AI in Africa

• AI for Development Africa (AI4D)
• Data Science Nigeria
• AI Expo Africa

Free online courses

• Kaggle's set of courses on Python and ML
• Python for total beginners (Udacity)
• Introduction to Python programming (Udacity)
• Introduction to ML (Udacity)
• Practical deep learning for coders (fast.ai)
• Reinforcement learning (Stanford)
• Many other courses that aren't free but are cheap enough these days on Coursera, edX and Udemy

Data to play with

• Kaggle
• Zindi (Africa's Kaggle)
• UCI ML data repository

SA companies employing DS graduates

• InstaDeep (in Cape Town)
• Capitec (DS hub in Stellenbosch)
• Praelexis (DS company based in Technopark)
• Aerobotics: DS and ML applied to farming (based in Cape Town)
• takealot