There's a lot of expensive data science bootcamps out there: Galvanize, Metis, and NYC Data Academy all cost $16,000. Springboard has an online one that will cost you $5,000 to $8,000. Udacity is on the cheaper side at $200 per/month for their Machine Learning Nanodegree, but that is more of a broad overview of Machine Learning than an in-depth, job-ready program. There's also courses on Udemy that are $10 to $20 total, but don't come with any career guidance or 1-on-1 teaching.

But there's a magical free work around this potential mountain of debt: GitHub. Almost all of these programs can be found on GitHub for free - you just have to figure out what to search for:

• Udacity: Udacity is easy. Their projects are all on the official GitHub and are open source. Some of their newer repos, like the Deep Learning Nanodegree, even have links to tutorials listed in the README. You can clone the repositories, and google whatever concepts you need to learn.

  The other nice thing about Udacity, is if you are REALLY stuck, you can google other students' Githubs, and see how a bunch of other people approached the problem (which I often find more informative than Udacity's lectures). That said, DON'T get in a habit of checking other people's answers, and especially DO NOT JUST COPY AND PASTE other people's code. Look at enough different student's answer to the problem until you understand what's happening and what you're trying to accomplish, and then write your own code.

• Galvanize, Metis, NYC Data Academy, Springboard: Many of these have great open source materials hidden in their public repos as well. Galvanize in particular has a pretty great stats and intro to python overview.

  But the amazing discovery I made (much like Columbus, I will take credit for this discovery even though you can be sure others did this already) is that if you search through the GitHub repos of students who have taken these courses, you will eventually find one who has posted everything they ever did in that class. Most will have their projects, and maybe challenge answers, but a few will also contain notes, lectures, cheat sheets - pretty much the works.

  And no, I'm not going to link those accounts because that is unfair to these businesses. But I will tell you that if you search the GitHub repositories of students from virtually any bootcamp, you will eventually find a student or combination of students that basically posted almost everything that ever happened.

• Udemy: Just pay the $10.