Chapter 9 YouTube
YouTube, as you might already know, is a video-sharing website that allows users to upload and view all sorts of videos. The videos hosted on YouTube range from home videos to music videos, movie trailers, and TV shows. Access to the content on Youtube is free but comes with commercials (you have to only pay to watch videos free of commercials). In order to upload videos, you need to have a Google account, but watching the content does not require any login. However, you need to login if you want to rate or comment on a video.
For a data scientist, YouTube can be an excellent resource for video tutorials on tools and tips of the trade. You can easily find step-by-step tutorials and other resources on any of the tools we’ve already discussed in this course by simply searching YouTube.
9.0.1 Accessing YouTube
You can access YouTube by going to the URL youtube.com in your web browser. You can also click on the start menu located on the lower left hand corner of your Chromebook and searching for “YouTube”.
If you aren’t logged into your Google account, you will arrive at a generic YouTube home page, where you can watch videos and search for specific video content. You can search for content using the search box at the top of the screen. If you want to get more personalized results or create your own playlists, you should log in via your Google account. You can do this by clicking on on the “SIGN IN” link in the top right corner of the screen.
Generic YouTube Homepage
On your personal YouTube home page, you will see YouTube’s recommendations for videos that you might like to watch. YouTube is also good with learning about your preferences. If you watch a video that is about how to import data into R, YouTube will suggest more videos related to those keywords to you. You can also easily locate videos you’ve already watched by clicking on “History” in the left-side menu.
Personal YouTube Homepage
9.0.2 Finding videos
There are various ways you can find relevant videos on YouTube:
- By viewing the charts ranking the Most Popular videos in any given category by clicking on the Trending icon on the left menu.
- By browsing channels via the link https://www.youtube.com/channels. You can browse channels from news and politics to technology.
- By searching videos by typing keywords in the search bar. For instance if you type “What is data science?”, YouTube will find around 22 million videos.
Search results
Note that you can filter your results when you search for specific keywords by clicking on the Filter icon on the top right corner. For instance, you can filter based on the length of the video or the time it was posted.
Filter Results
9.0.3 Data science on YouTube
For our purposes, here is a list of some of the most popular YouTube channels on data science. You can find any of these channels by searching for the name, for example “Data Science Dojo,” in the YouTube Search box. You can then subscribe to the channel by clicking the red “Subscribe” box on the right.
Data science channels
You can find the channels that you have subscribed to under the “Subscriptions” section in the left-hand menu of your YouTube home page.
Subscriptions
9.0.4 How to save videos to watch later
Sometimes you may discover an interesting video on YouTube, but may be too busy to watch it right away. One way to save the video so you can watch it later is to “like” the video by clicking the “thumbs up” icon below the video screen.
Liking a video
This will add the video to your favorites, which can be found under “Liked videos” in the left-hand menu on your YouTube home page.
Favorite videos
Overall, YouTube is be a great place to go to for finding answers to your questions. There are millions of videos explaining things that you might not know about or pertaining to topics that you don’t want to read pages and pages of text in order to understand. Sometimes a good 5-minute video can be the most efficient way to get the information you need.