Tag Archives: data science

Learning a Language? Export your Data from Duolingo.

Why learn a language? This is one avenue of life that I am constantly working on. If I had the ability to speak fluently in another language, life would be easier (emphasis on the would be). Whatever your reason for studying a language, you can keep track of your progress over time with Duolingo.

I want to show you how to export your own data from Duolingo and hopefully inspire you to do better than myself in your language learning practice. You will see what I mean… 😉

How to download your data from Duolingo?

First, you want to log into your account, then go to the “Settings.”

Next, you will want to find “Export my data,” and then click that.

There was a message that popped up stating that it could take up to 30 days for them to send my data, but the reality is, I got an email within an hour stating that the data was ready to be downloaded.

We did it!!! Now, let’s analyze the results! They should come in a csv file, so if you want to use Excel for analysis, that is an option, Tableau, R, Python, and Power BI, to name a few, are other viable options. I am going to use R. Here is a complete version of what I did: http://rpubs.com/natester/duolingoanalysis

Here is the summarized version of what I did….Looking at totals for 2019 and 2020, you will see I did better in 2019.

leaderboard_barchart <- ggplot(data=leaderboard_groupedby_year, aes(x=year, y=TOTAL_SCORE))

leaderboard_barchart + 
  geom_col(color= c('orangered','blue'),fill=c('orangered','blue'))+
  theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),panel.background = element_blank())+
  theme_void()+
  labs(title= "Total Score for 2019 (Orange) and 2020 (Blue)")+
  geom_text(aes(label = TOTAL_SCORE), 
            position = position_dodge(0.9),
            vjust = -0.5,
            size =5,
            color=c('orangered','blue'))

Visualizing the Data by Month

head(leaderboard)
##   leaderboard       date timestamp tier score year
## 1     leagues 2019-05-18  20:00:35    0    20 2019
## 2     leagues 2019-05-20  11:14:16    0    50 2019
## 3     leagues 2019-05-27  12:41:58    0    60 2019
## 4     leagues 2019-06-03  11:58:17    0    40 2019
## 5     leagues 2019-06-10  22:35:45    0    50 2019
## 6     leagues 2019-06-17  11:36:58    0    40 2019

leaderboard_linechart <- ggplot(data=leaderboard, aes(x=date, y=score))

leaderboard_linechart + 
  geom_line(color= c('cornflowerblue'),size =1)+
  theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),panel.background = element_blank())+
  labs(title= "Score Over Time for 2019 through 2020")

It looks like I reached my highest peak in my score at the beginning of 2020. What was that score?

sqldf("SELECT date, MAX(score) AS HIGHEST_SCORE
       FROM leaderboard 
       ")
##         date HIGHEST_SCORE
## 1 2020-01-27           109

109 was my highest score on ‘2020-01-27’, however, as we discovered. I showed a greater total score for 2019.

The take away from my charts are, overtime consistency matters more than one single learning sprint; especially, when it comes to learning languages.

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The New Role: Complete Career Change

I am going to start writing more frequently, so I can hopefully encourage others to do the same in their journey to learn more, and also to hopefully get feedback about how to improve my posts or personal knowledge base. I am always open to learning something new.

So why wait till now to start writing? Well, I started my new role, and I simply love it, however, I haven’t been writing much because of how content I am with the team and the things I get to work on and learn. 

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

Hold on pause! BACK IT UP!

Okay, here is some context. I was working in the Sales department with a great team of people, however, the work was unrelated to what I wanted to do long term, which is, to work with databases, and eventually, work as a Data Scientist!

Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash

So far things have been going great in my new role, but getting to where I am now was not the easiest thing for me to do. I had to put together a plan because attending classes is not enough if you are going through a complete career change like I was. Let me give you the rundown of the different roles I have held over the years.

career_journey <- c('Paraprofessional at Roberts Academy','English Teacher in Japan','Long Term English Substitute Teacher for Finneytown Highschool','Kroger IT Support Analyst','Sales Underwriting Assistant','Business Intelligence Developer')
summary(career_journey)
career_journey <- data.frame(career_journey)
The Various Jobs I have held on my Arbitrary Path Towards My Career
career_journey
Paraprofessional at Roberts Academy
English Teacher in Japan
Long Term English Substitute Teacher for Finneytown Highschool
Kroger IT Support Analyst
Sales Underwriting Assistant
Business Intelligence Developer

I graduated from school wanting to be a teacher helping students learn the English language through literature, well, that was fun while it lasted, but proved to be not the right career move for me. I was scared of moving into something related to computers, however, when I jumped in and realized how fun and rewarding working with data can be, I felt like I had found my mate for life…data. Hence the blog name and image…

Maybe you find yourself in a similar situation, where your current career goals…

1. seem to not be working out the way you thought

2. have become a lie you tell yourself to get through the day

3. you are finding that the thing you loved the most about your career is getting replaced or overrun by something else (this is the category I fell into).

Don’t give in! Explore your options and never doubt yourself! Your brain is a powerful tool that can be reconfigured to whatever you set your mind to. As cliché as that sounds, it’s true. The only limit is what you put into action. For me, this was a Data Analytics Program, a ton of self-study (SQL phone apps, Quizlet for vocab, R phone apps, and practice on my PC), and a determination to succeed.

If you are thinking about switching careers you probably have a long laundry list of things you think will be holding you back. One of mine was having my first kid! Can you believe that? I actually thought an incredible innocent little creature was going to “hold me back,” but guess what, she became another motivating factor for me to work harder if anything else, because now my daughter was apart of my journey, and I couldn’t let myself, my wife, and my daughter down!!! There were quite a number of mornings at 5 am where my daughter would only fall asleep in the carrier which I would strap on and start rocking her to sleep while also typing SQL queries, and SAS or R code on my computer for my class projects (Rest assured, if I were to put her into her crib, she would be back up in a heartbeat 😉 , so the carrier was the best option for her and myself).

So what if I am just not as amazing as you? This question assumes that I am some degree of “amazing” by myself, but the truth is the most important ingredient to your success is the team of people you have behind you whole love and support you.

I hope you found this piece encouraging! I want to help those who wish to move into a different career but feel trapped. You can do it! It takes a lot of hard work, but you can do it!

I am going to more regularly blog tips and tricks I have picked up that have proven to be helpful for me. I also want to post some different projects I complete.

Thank you for reading!