About Philip Kalinda
My name is Philip Kalinda and I'm a Pythonista, Data Scientist and lover of knowledge. I'm an avid believer in improving the world through science and adhere to the notion of continual learning throughout life with my unquenchable thirst for knowledge. That is the very reason I made this website. Inherently underpinning these beliefs is the concept of knowledge sharing which I also fully endorse and hope to achieve with this site.
To tell you more about myself, I have always been fond of numbers and using them to solve all sorts of problems. That was one of the only things I really knew about myself when finishing my A-Levels. I had no idea what it was I wanted to study at university or what I wanted to do with my life. I was in Zambia at the time and most people that were good at numbers went into accounting. I followed suit and thought I would give it a go; however, I learnt that accounting wasn't for me! It was quite boring and repetitive and wasn't really exercising my numerical abilities and problem solving. I thought to myself that picking a subject shouldn't be this difficult! I love numbers and I wanted to make money so i decided to go to university and study my bachelors in Mathematics (for the numbers) and Business (for the money).
I learnt very quickly that there was a large proportion of students who also had no idea what it was they wanted to study! It was good to know that I wasn't alone! People were constantly reshuffling their courses and titles all in the hopes to find the perfect fit for themselves! I guess that's what university is for! Exploring your options, learning more about yourself, shaping your future and discovering what you would like to do with the rest of your life!
As I was going through my degree, I found the Mathematics to be fun and challenging whereas I found the Business side required that I write way too many words than I would have liked! It made me question how much I really wanted to study the business side, but at the time it was too late to change! I will say that it did help me in learning how to write commentaries, reports and research findings much more fluently than a raw mathematician. It was when I stumbled across a module called "Business Analysis Tools" that I realised that there was a field that dedicated itself in the application of mathematics within business. I loved it! We covered things like simulation, linear programming, markov models and more! I aced the class and held that topic close to heart and began my research into the field of business analysis.
My love for the field was further solidified in my final year where I studied a module called "Management Science". This was very similar to the "Business Analysis Tools" and we covered topics like Queuing Theory, Game Theory, Dynamic Programming and more! I loved it and aced the class! This module prompted me to conduct more research in the field and I came across Operational Research! I then joined the OR society and attended a number of events learning more about the field as well as liaising frequently with my tutor on topics learnt. I later learned that this field in which mathematics was applied to solve problems was all in the same field but with several names; Business Analysis, Operational Research, Management Science! When I finished my Bachelors I knew I had to learn more about this amazing subject! I had to do a Masters!
Now that I knew the general direction in which I wanted to steer my career, it was time to make the investment in myself and go after what I loved to do! I actually came up with a number of great universities offering the same or similar courses around Business Analysis, Operational Research and Management Science and had no idea which one I should go for! I had to be wise because a Masters degree nowadays don't come cheap and so I approached the problem the only way I knew how... Mathematically! I gathered as much information as I could about each of the universities and the courses and modelled the problem into a Linear Programming problem to which I applied the simplex method to solve (manually as I didn't know about coding at the time 😅 ). I had a number of constraints, mostly around the costs and what I could afford in terms of cost of the course and living costs in the area, whilst optimising the reputation of the university and their ratings all from thecompleteuniversityguide.com. The results were in... I was going to Leeds University to study "MSc Business Analytics and Decision Sciences"!!
To tell you more about myself, I have always been fond of numbers and using them to solve all sorts of problems. That was one of the only things I really knew about myself when finishing my A-Levels. I had no idea what it was I wanted to study at university or what I wanted to do with my life. I was in Zambia at the time and most people that were good at numbers went into accounting. I followed suit and thought I would give it a go; however, I learnt that accounting wasn't for me! It was quite boring and repetitive and wasn't really exercising my numerical abilities and problem solving. I thought to myself that picking a subject shouldn't be this difficult! I love numbers and I wanted to make money so i decided to go to university and study my bachelors in Mathematics (for the numbers) and Business (for the money).
I learnt very quickly that there was a large proportion of students who also had no idea what it was they wanted to study! It was good to know that I wasn't alone! People were constantly reshuffling their courses and titles all in the hopes to find the perfect fit for themselves! I guess that's what university is for! Exploring your options, learning more about yourself, shaping your future and discovering what you would like to do with the rest of your life!
As I was going through my degree, I found the Mathematics to be fun and challenging whereas I found the Business side required that I write way too many words than I would have liked! It made me question how much I really wanted to study the business side, but at the time it was too late to change! I will say that it did help me in learning how to write commentaries, reports and research findings much more fluently than a raw mathematician. It was when I stumbled across a module called "Business Analysis Tools" that I realised that there was a field that dedicated itself in the application of mathematics within business. I loved it! We covered things like simulation, linear programming, markov models and more! I aced the class and held that topic close to heart and began my research into the field of business analysis.
My love for the field was further solidified in my final year where I studied a module called "Management Science". This was very similar to the "Business Analysis Tools" and we covered topics like Queuing Theory, Game Theory, Dynamic Programming and more! I loved it and aced the class! This module prompted me to conduct more research in the field and I came across Operational Research! I then joined the OR society and attended a number of events learning more about the field as well as liaising frequently with my tutor on topics learnt. I later learned that this field in which mathematics was applied to solve problems was all in the same field but with several names; Business Analysis, Operational Research, Management Science! When I finished my Bachelors I knew I had to learn more about this amazing subject! I had to do a Masters!
Now that I knew the general direction in which I wanted to steer my career, it was time to make the investment in myself and go after what I loved to do! I actually came up with a number of great universities offering the same or similar courses around Business Analysis, Operational Research and Management Science and had no idea which one I should go for! I had to be wise because a Masters degree nowadays don't come cheap and so I approached the problem the only way I knew how... Mathematically! I gathered as much information as I could about each of the universities and the courses and modelled the problem into a Linear Programming problem to which I applied the simplex method to solve (manually as I didn't know about coding at the time 😅 ). I had a number of constraints, mostly around the costs and what I could afford in terms of cost of the course and living costs in the area, whilst optimising the reputation of the university and their ratings all from thecompleteuniversityguide.com. The results were in... I was going to Leeds University to study "MSc Business Analytics and Decision Sciences"!!
Looking back, I think I made the absolute best decision! Not only did I learn a vast amount of new topics in the field but I also met a lot of interesting people from all around the world and built lasting friendships with like-minded analytical people! It was refreshing to geek out into the subject and share ideas. We embarked on a number of projects like demonstrating to a top electronic component company, Premier Farnell, how they could use Big Data to enhance their operations and gather insight. We highlighted areas such as leveraging their unstructured data with Natural Language Processing in order to conduct sentiment analysis about products and develop a recommendation system off the back of that. We also talked about other data analytical tools that they could use and manage their customer data and relationships!
Back to the Course, what I found interesting was that the course did not only look at the analytical tools and techniques used in order to inform decision making but it also looked at the psychology around the decision making process and our different system thinking mechanisms and the bias each are susceptible to as well as heuristics we subconsciously apply when making decisions. The analytical tools and techniques interest me the most though. We learnt a lot about machine learning techniques (Neural Networks, Swarm Optimisation, etc), a number of different algorithms (Genetic , Simulated Annealing, etc), and a lot on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (ELECTRE III, TOPSIS, VIKOR) and how to code them all within the R programming Language.
After this long journey of learning, I finally knew the field in which I was searching for this whole time which involved these analytical techniques and mathematical modelling for making decisions... Data Science! Since, I have dedicated my time to the field of Data Science learning everything I can about the subject! I'm ecstatic to be able to know what it is I want to do with my life and even more so to find that its an ever growing field with like-minded people who love to share and learn from each other making it easy to learn.
Ok, so I love Data Science. Why Python? The simple answer to this is that the versatility, robustness and philosophy of the Python programming language really appealed to me. After much research, I came to the conclusion that the language was about empowerment. I have since seen python as a tool to empower smart individuals that understand any given problem domain by giving them technology that enables them to access all the data and power they need to solve those problems. It just made sense. Python is a lot easier to interpret and it also allows me to keep my options open with an assortment of frameworks and modules that can allow you to analyse data, develop web applications or even program a robot to execute any given task! One of the things that made me stay was the community! I've seen many people say that they come to python for the programming language and stay because of the community. The python community has been the most welcoming community i have come across. There is a lot of emphasis on the people and sharing ideas and expanding on existing ideas which then opens the door to python in new industries. I knew I had to be a part of such a wonderful community! Hence, a Pythonista was born!
Back to the Course, what I found interesting was that the course did not only look at the analytical tools and techniques used in order to inform decision making but it also looked at the psychology around the decision making process and our different system thinking mechanisms and the bias each are susceptible to as well as heuristics we subconsciously apply when making decisions. The analytical tools and techniques interest me the most though. We learnt a lot about machine learning techniques (Neural Networks, Swarm Optimisation, etc), a number of different algorithms (Genetic , Simulated Annealing, etc), and a lot on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (ELECTRE III, TOPSIS, VIKOR) and how to code them all within the R programming Language.
After this long journey of learning, I finally knew the field in which I was searching for this whole time which involved these analytical techniques and mathematical modelling for making decisions... Data Science! Since, I have dedicated my time to the field of Data Science learning everything I can about the subject! I'm ecstatic to be able to know what it is I want to do with my life and even more so to find that its an ever growing field with like-minded people who love to share and learn from each other making it easy to learn.
Ok, so I love Data Science. Why Python? The simple answer to this is that the versatility, robustness and philosophy of the Python programming language really appealed to me. After much research, I came to the conclusion that the language was about empowerment. I have since seen python as a tool to empower smart individuals that understand any given problem domain by giving them technology that enables them to access all the data and power they need to solve those problems. It just made sense. Python is a lot easier to interpret and it also allows me to keep my options open with an assortment of frameworks and modules that can allow you to analyse data, develop web applications or even program a robot to execute any given task! One of the things that made me stay was the community! I've seen many people say that they come to python for the programming language and stay because of the community. The python community has been the most welcoming community i have come across. There is a lot of emphasis on the people and sharing ideas and expanding on existing ideas which then opens the door to python in new industries. I knew I had to be a part of such a wonderful community! Hence, a Pythonista was born!
