Data science is an ever-expanding field. More industries continue to rely on technology for gathering and acting upon vital information, and data scientists are in high demand. However, finding a job that fits your needs can sometimes be a challenge. Freelance is quickly becoming a popular option for professionals of all kinds. In fact, LinkedIn is rolling out a new feature specifically for helping freelancers find work.

In the summer of 2017, a Los Angeles man in his mid-20s put on a necklace, blond wig and makeup and made a cellphone video describing how his camera and other electronics had been stolen. He submitted the video to his renters insurance provider, Lemonade, which paid the $677 claim in two days. Three months later, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and using a different name, email address and phone number, the same man submitted a video claim for a stolen $5,000 camera. But this time, the algorithms that are a crucial part of Lemonade's highly automated systems flagged the claim as suspicious. Last year, the persistent fraudster, this time wearing a pink dress, tried again, only to be foiled once more by Lemonade's computers.

Ricardo Diaz is a machine learning engineer. He works for a great company in Peru, and he's a graduate of no less than four Nanodegree programs! But just two years ago, it was a different story. He was still in Venezuela, struggling to learn new skills. He was short of money, and his prospects for making a full-time salary weren't great.

There are many ways to buy a video game. You can snag a physical copy, peruse a digital store like Steam, or subscribe to massive Netflix-style services such as PlayStation Now and Xbox Games Pass. There's no shortage of options, but that hasn't stopped Sokpop -- an indie'collective' in the Netherlands -- from trying something different. For $3 per month, you can access a new game made by the team every fortnight. In addition, the team is working on larger projects that will, once they're complete, be accessible to subscribers too.

Freelance workers enable the automation of their work -- ironically. AGI (artificial general intelligence) is the pursuit of machine cognition, largely still a work in progress. Pat Langley from Arizona State University, has an excellent essay highlighting the differences between most of what's labeled "AI", and what he refers to as the'Cognitive Systems Paradigm'. A cognitive system has the machinery to begin working with written language, use heuristics and other approaches to deal with incomplete data, make inferences from structured representations of information, and so on. Some current AGI frameworks can productively be part of this type of work, although unfortunately many projects are not yet well documented or openly available.

Taking a computer science course will mean you will be studying a subject at the very forefront of technology and innovation. Computers are everywhere, and the demand to make them smaller, work more quickly, and be fitted with new and exciting software has never been greater. Most computing courses tend to focus on software engineering - things like database design, network systems, computer hardware, the internet. But there are other options in this field, such as artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and multimedia and games design, and apps design. You will be expected to be good at maths and an interest in physics would also help, as most of the theory will touch on both subjects.