Disclaimer: This was my inaugural blog post and first extended written work in years — please be gentle!
Background
I'm a law degree graduate who at a certain point decided to switch to computer science and programming — my passion since childhood. After years of working with SQL scripts, data retrieval, cleaning, analysis, and presentation, I recognized this as a formal field within computer science: data analysis.
The Course
I discovered a Freecodecamp livestream series titled "Data Analysis with Python: from zero to pandas" — a six-part weekly program covering Python and Pandas fundamentals. Course assignments required submission through Jovian, a notebook-sharing platform.
How Jovian Works
Jovian supports authentication via GitHub and Google accounts. The platform integrates with several public notebook environments:
- Kaggle — for competitions and datasets
- Google Colab — free GPU-enabled notebooks
- Binder — reproducible environments from Git repos
- Locally installed Jupyter servers
Users install a jovian module to create and update projects on their profile. The platform supports version control, enabling tracking across commits.
Key Benefits
The primary advantage is the ability to embed notebook cells into websites and blog posts. You can embed:
- Code-only cells
- Output-only cells
- Complete worksheets with both code and output
Saved notebooks also provide direct links to execute on Kaggle, Colab, or Binder — making it easy for others to run and modify your analysis.
Limitations
I encountered two notable drawbacks:
- Broken internal links — Navigation within the Jovian interface doesn't always work correctly, which can hinder readers trying to follow along.
- Disabled custom output sizing — You cannot control the dimensions of embedded outputs, which can affect the presentation of visualizations.
What Came Next
The course culminated in a real-world dataset analysis project. I chose to analyze SARS-CoV-2 infection data for Romania — you can read about the results in my article: Snapshot of SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Romania.