From Finance and Accounting to Data Science : Learn Python Programming

In Finance and Accounting, everyone is talking about Python, and for good reason. With an exponentially growing community around data science, machine learning, AI, automation and more, Python is a language that opens programming access to the world. Python is meant to be one of the easiest programming languages to learn.

In this article I will explain how did I learn Python Programming. But first, just a little bit about me.

From Finance and Accounting to Data Science : Learn Python Programming by Christian Martinez Founder of The Financial Fox

About Me

My name is Christian Martinez and I am the International Finance Automation Manager for Kraft Heinz and Founder of a side project called The Financial Fox.

My background is in Finance and Accounting but I successfully transition to Data Science and Automation. I use data analytics and automation tools such as Python, Tableau, Alteryx, Power BI, SQL, Excel with VBA, and R to build and improve on the existing productivity-reporting infrastructure across Kraft Heinz International Zone (LATAM/EUROPE/ASIA/PACIFIC).

This role is part of the Finance team in close collaboration with business stakeholders and functions like Manufacturing, Logistics, Procurement, R&D, Quality, ORM — supporting their decision-making using analytics and data.

I am a finalist in the Young Leaders in Finance Awards 2018 ; Marathon Finisher and World traveler (have been in 65+ countries and always planning next adventure!).

Feel free to connect with me in LinkedIn!

Christian Martinez, Finance Automation Manager at Kraft Heinz and Founder of The Financial Fox

How did my story with Python start?

I first learnt about Python when I started my Master’s Degree in Finance and Data Analytics in 2016 at Melbourne, Australia.

My peers came from many different backgrounds: accounting, finance, marketing, chemical engineering, physics and international business.

But one thing that we all had in common was that hunger of knowledge and of learning the newest technologies that will revolutionize finance and accounting for the years to come.

And Python right in the center of everything.

What is Python?

Python is a high level programming language. This means that is closer to human language as oppose of machine language. Programming languages like C++ or Java which were taught years ago in finance universities are on the other side of the spectrum. They are closer to binary code or 0s and 1s than English.

This is one of the reasons that Python is so simple and easy to learn. For example, if you want to print the words “hello world” using Python the code is just: print(“hello world”). In Java, things get super complicated very quickly as you can see in the image below.

Python is simple and easy to learn, yet Python is also powerful and has a large ecosystem. There is multiple ways you can learn Python, from YouTube videos, books, online forums, workshops, online courses, at university, from peers or even Apps! But in this article, we are going to talk about my journey learning Python.

Why did I decide to learn Python?

I have always like to learn new things and learning how to code was one of the items of my career bucket list since 2013.

At the same time, when I first come to Australia I started to research the finance jobs landscape and it seem very competitive. I wanted to learn things that could give me an edge and that make my CV stand out!

After careful consideration, I decided that Python was going to be one of the things in my CV that made me stand out. Python is very popular in current times and the fastest growing language, so it’s a great skill to add to your CV.

When I started to read about the power of Python, I found out that Python is useful to automate repetitive tasks and free up time to do a deeper data and financial analysis, also in Python!

Python has many libraries and frameworks for different purposes, so I learnt that I did not have to reinvent the wheel every time I wanted to learn how to do things. Instead, I could use the libraries!

These are 4 libraries essential to start with Python:

Finally, Python is a popular language in Machine Learning as it can be used to build algorithms using statistics to allow computers to perform different actions. At that stage I didn’t know what machine learning was but in case you want to learn more about how I learnt Machine Learning, this is the article for you!

How did I learn Python?

When I first started to learn Python, I just googled “How to Learn Python”.

Today, if you do the same, there are about 536 MILLION results. Talk about information overload.

I tried to do a couple of online courses and found out that Python is open source, meaning that is free to use.

So I decided to download the software to my laptop.

Then I learnt about Anaconda and question myself if all the lingo in programming had to do with animals (and I didn’t even learn about the Pandas library yet!). I downloaded Anaconda and learnt about Jupyter Notebooks and PyCharm so I downloaded them. I found out that all of them are types of integrated development environments which are used in computer programming.

After all the downloads I decided to call it a night and upgrade my CV with Python as a skill (that last part is a joke!).

I forgot about it for a couple of weeks but then decided to have it a go again so I tried to do my online course again.

After 2 hours and 3 modules completed, I knew that it was going to be a little bit more complicated and time consuming that I thought.

I also found out that just doing online courses wasn’t going to be enough (at least for me!) so I started looking at how to do courses of Python during my Master’s degree and I found out a path that taught me Basic to Advanced Python, Data Wrangling and even Machine Learning (ML). It was not open for everyone doing my Finance Master’s so I knew I needed to convince my university that I really wanted to learn so that they gave me the opportunity to do these courses.

During that time, university summer break was ahead of me and I was going to travel to Hong Kong to meet with my family. It was the first time that I was going to see them since I came to Australia so I was very excited. As I was seating on the airplane, I saw that my course director from my Master’s was in the sit next to me. This was very lucky because we spent almost all of the 9 hours of flying time between Melbourne to Hong Kong discussing about the future of finance and accounting and how technology and programming languages started to revolutionize the industry. At the middle of the conversation, I asked him about that track of learning Python, ML and data analytics. He suggested me to do some courses on Excel with VBA and SAS first and if I liked it, then move to do courses in Python, R, SQL.

During my introductory lectures we focused not just in Python but on analytics and data science as whole.

I started to talk to people about how to up my game in Python and they suggested me three things:

Get a Mentor / Tutor that could help you in specific questions that has already transitioned to Data Science from Finance;
Compete in Kaggle Competitions or Hackathons or start self initiated projects to “learn by doing” and
Go to industry events such as meetups, conferences and webinars

I will write further articles on how to do these three things but for now, I want to share with you a list of resources I have used in the past that I think can HELP YOU TO LEARN PYTHON as a finance and accounting professional.