With the plethora of ‘open’ sources resources for Data Science available today and the vast multitude of content creators and wannabe ‘YouTubers’  the average learner Data Science enthusiast finds almost every subject in a  YouTube video available for consumption for free.

The debate rages thus, “Can I become a YouTube learned Data Scientist ?” maybe an extended question – “Why would I pay a cent for any platform based learning when I can watch almost every video for free ?” 

Let us attempt to review this from an unbiased sense! While its true that one can learn the basics of any data science subject through several well made videos by experts and educators in the field, they do not address three  prime concerns while catering the dissemination of the basic knowledge to the masses for free. 

Concern 1: 

The average learner often  may not have the correct prerequisites or academic background to understand the content in the Video and thus would have several doubts which remain unanswered while learning in such a way which hampers the concept building. 

Concern 2: 

The experience one gets while actually working hands-on with live data in real projects involves facing data challenges , data quality issues , problems of scale and data scarcity and are only learned when faced and not from tutorials – this is what we call experiential learning.

 Concern 3:

Accountability and completeness of knowledge is the biggest differentiator between YouTube based learning vs learning from a proper training delivered. How do you know what you have learnt is good enough for you to apply on a real business project? An YouTuber is more interested to his/her fame and earning from YT than ensuring your learning goals.

Thus we see that while the good to brilliant student may still manage to go by with a video based content learning he or she will still miss the ‘real’ feel and the tips and techniques namely the “art of data science’ as best taught by a practitioner who has faced the same while working with live data.

 It is no secret therefore that face 2 face learning or blended learning models are so much sought after in spite of almost every subject matter being available for free consumption in you tube these days.

 Another angle which may prove to be a learning hindrance is purely technical though. A learner watching a YouTube Video is also constantly at risk of attention diversion through pop ups , ads and even the click baits which threaten the attention span on the learning itself.  As they say, YouTube may be free but then you are the product being targeted!