The idea behind Tenth Percentile is that we all start from scratch when learning a new skill. In statistics, the tenth percentile is the lowest 10% of a group/population/cohort. It’s not typically where you would aim to be. But when it comes to learning something new, the tenth percentile is the best place to be because it’s where the highest potential for growth is.
No one is born with the inherent knowledge of how to code or analyze data. And more importantly, no one is predisposed to be “better at it” than anyone else. There may be many factors at play including our different strengths and weaknesses, but I would argue that the gatekeeping in the coding/programming/data analytics world is the primary factor holding most people back from being empowered to learn the skill.
It took me a few years of piddling here and there to learn R after I decided that was something I wanted to pursue. Even with all the resources available, I was hard-pressed to find certain beginner-level tutorials that weren’t difficult for me to jump into or full-blown books. I wasn’t motivated enough to spend hours reading a textbook over something I couldn’t even begin to understand. Then, when I had a job where it was not necessarily required but would be helpful for my day-to-day process, I picked it up in a matter of a few months.
I was thinking about why it took me so long to commit, and I realized that I needed my learning environment to be simpler and all in one place. I didn’t want to spend a million hours googling how to’s and errors until I absolutely had to. That’s why I wanted to create this website, to have an outlet to document my findings in one place and share what I’m learning along the way. If even just one other person finds it useful I will consider it a success.
That being said, please reach out if you have a question we could figure out together, a suggestion for a post, or simply want to geek out about a new data discovery!
Thanks for stopping by,