Madeleine Mills

Since Madeleine discovered that Data Science was a blend of all her favourite subject areas she hasn’t looked back.

“I went to a subject expo and saw that Te Herenga Waka­—Victoria University of Wellington was offering a new course, Data Science. I looked into it, I liked programming, I liked statistics and I thought the combination of the two made my choice a lot easier.” Says Madeleine.

So far the course has presented a blend of subjects as promised. In her first few semesters, Madeleine has explored programming, ethics discussions, essays and group work. “Everyone had told me group work is horrible, but it was fantastic! It was a really positive experience. We did our project on the new Metlink Buses and I really loved working on it.”

Now that Madeleine is getting into her 200 level courses, she is finding the material a bit more challenging. Her main advice is not to stress about getting something done, be consistent and it will work out. “The timetable is quite regular, most of my days start at the same time and knowing that makes the workload easier to manage”.

Madeleine's future plans have not yet been decided. “I want to do something to make systems better, but I also want to make solutions effectively. Data is a long-term career path, it doesn’t matter how many AI’s and tools are developed to write software for you, data will always exist and be important in these decisions.”