Learning from others is imperative to success on Kaggle says this Turkish GrandMaster
In conversation with Fatih Öztürk: A Data Scientist and a Kaggle Competition Grandmaster.
In this series of interviews, I present the stories of established Data Scientists and Kaggle Grandmasters at H2O.ai, who share their journey, inspirations, and accomplishments. These interviews are intended to motivate and encourage others who want to understand what it takes to be a Kaggle Grandmaster.
In this interview, I shall be sharing my interaction with Fatih Öztürk. He is a Kaggle Competitions’ Grandmaster and a Data Scientist at H2O.ai. Fatih obtained a Bachelor’s in industrial engineering with honors at the Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He worked as a Data Scientist at UrbanStat before joining H2O.ai. Fatih joined Kaggle almost four years ago and has won seven golds, including a solo one. He also holds the Master status in the discussion tier as well.
In this interview, we shall know more about his academic background, his passion for Kaggle, and his work as a Data Scientist. Here is an excerpt from my conversation with Fatih:
You have a background in Industrial Engineering. What prompted you to choose Data Science as a career?
Fatih: My primary focus in Industrial Engineering was on Operations Research(OR), Supply Chains, and Statistics. Apart from these main courses, we also had the option to choose specific electives based on our interests. In my last semester, I took “Data Mining’’ as one of my elective courses. One of the reasons for opting for this choice was its popularity. While studying data mining, it was for the first time that I came across concepts like the random forest, classification, predicting things, etc. I found it pretty interesting and analogous to playing some competitive game. I realized that my passion lay in the field of data analysis, and I instantly knew what field I had to pursue after my graduation.
How did your tryst with Kaggle begin, and what kept you motivated throughout your GrandMaster’s journey?