Getting a Data Science Education

The PhD intern recruited at the beginning of the year for 6 months (who has become full-time staff now in the Data Science team) had no knowledge of machine learning at all. Also little statistics knowledge as his area he did his PhD thesis was on partial differential equations applying to option pricing & financial markets. I requested him to send his thesis. His lack of machine learning & statistic's knowledge swayed some team members from him, but I put more weight in his favour after reading his thesis. Anyone who understands partial differential equations can also self taught to understand machine learning & that's fact.