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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Experimentation for Improvement by McMaster University

4.9
stars
916 ratings

About the Course

We are always using experiments to improve our lives, our community, and our work. Are you doing it efficiently? Or are you (incorrectly) changing one thing at a time and hoping for the best? In this course, you will learn how to plan efficient experiments - testing with many variables. Our goal is to find the best results using only a few experiments. A key part of the course is how to optimize a system. We use simple tools: starting with fast calculations by hand, then we show how to use FREE software. The course comes with slides, transcripts of all lectures, subtitles (English, Spanish and Portuguese; some Chinese and French), videos, audio files, source code, and a free textbook. You get to keep all of it, all freely downloadable. This course is for anyone working in a company, or wanting to make changes to their life, their community, their neighbourhood. You don't need to be a statistician or scientist! There's something for everyone in here. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Over 1500 people have completed this online course. What have prior students said about this course? "This definitely is one of the most fruitful courses I have participated at Coursera, considering the takeaways and implementations! And so far I finished 12 [courses]." "Excelente curso, flexible y con suficiente material didáctico fácilmente digerible y cómodo. No importa si se tiene pocas bases matemáticas o estadísticas, el curso proporciona casi toda explicación necesaria para un entendimiento alto." "I wish I had enrolled in your course years ago -- it would have saved us a lot of time in optimizing experimental conditions." Jason Eriksen, 3 Jan 2017 "Interesting and developing both analytical and creative thinking. The lecturer took care to bring lots of real live examples which are fun to analyze." 20 February 2016. "... love your style of presentation, and the examples you took from everyday life to explain things. It is very difficult to make such a mathematical course accessible and comprehensible to this wide a variety of people!" ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯...

Top reviews

SM

Jul 21, 2020

It is one of the best course present on coursera. I would recommend everyone to take this course. It will not only help you to optimize your activities in work place but also in your personal life.

CC

Nov 6, 2024

It is an interesting course in the context of DOE. Topics are well-developed and the concepts behinds each design from full factorials to fractioned and RSM are well explained. I recommend it.

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1 - 25 of 236 Reviews for Experimentation for Improvement

By francisco g h r

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Oct 2, 2017

The absolute best starting point if you need to learn DOE at an urgency. It is up to par and even beyond professional options that charge thousands of dollars for a 40 hour, 1 week course. Professor Dunn even offers a free coursebook to complement his excelent lectures, which goes well beyond the intensive 5-6 weeks period. Uses R for programming and gives just the necessary snippets of code needed to complete every exercise and quiz. Plenty of real-life examples and a succinct style makes this course your only stop to understand DOE and then go on your own. Statistics are not needed, but having a previous background will help you appreciate even more the quality and effort put in every lecture. Two words of advice: 1 ) Take notes, as every video is full of little details. 2 ) It is the entry-level DOE course, seasoned experimenters will finish all units in 1 or 2 weeks.

By Ahmed S S B A

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Oct 7, 2018

Really interesting course, simple and helpful for all fields. It required not specific background, just start and enjoy the wonderful way Kevin illustrate the course.

By Patrick B

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Feb 11, 2019

This is a great course to learn how to perform efficient experiments by varying multiple factors at a time. For scientists who do R&D research, this is an invaluable tool that will set you apart from your colleagues. In this course you learn "Experimental Design" with a bit of R code to get you started. The lessons progress at an even and steady pace that helps you retain information taught in previous sections. This was a very well executed course.

By Daniel M

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Jan 26, 2016

Excelente curso, flexible y con suficiente material didáctico fácilmente digerible y cómodo. No importa si se tiene pocas bases matemáticas o estadísticas, el curso proporciona casi toda explicación necesaria para un entendimiento alto.

Ideal para ingenieros en calidad y toda aquella persona que busque el mejoramiento y mejor rendimiento de negocio, procesos, investigación, etc. Apto para TODA persona además curiosa y con ganas de aprender algo nuevo.

By SHIVAM K G

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May 14, 2020

A very useful course for research students and academic and industry persons. The course starts from the basics of DOE and it takes to two factor RSM. The page of resources is very useful, it provides flexible R codes and beautifully designed practice problems.

By Bettina S

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Aug 16, 2017

A very good introduction to the concept of Design of Experiments. The course gives you a good overview and leaves you with a manual for your own work. Furthermore the course has several extras, e.g. an own online textbook.

By Maria V B

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Nov 19, 2020

Amazing! Very useful information, very intense workload. It´s a difficult subject, very well explained. It has many applications in almost any life or work area. Highly recommend it.

By Antonino C

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Feb 19, 2018

Fantastic .. as i am studying to gain the black belt in Six Sigma training, I was stuck on the design of experiment, but with this course I solved it !!!!

Htank you very much

By Omaima H

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Nov 12, 2018

This is my second online course and my experiences have been amazing so far. With regards to this course, I could not have asked for a better teacher, teaching method, and the timing of this course for me as I am very much able to apply it in my academics and vice versa. The best part about it is its reach, that it caters to people who are technical as well as non-technical. It definitely boosts your self-esteem and confidence. the fact that you are able to study a course outside the premises of your campus and break out of the shell, with people learning from all over the world; the assessments are transparent and merit-based, and the feedback is timely. Sitting on my couch at home in Karachi, I was able to take on a course from a Canadian university, is amazing,

By Stéphane S

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May 10, 2019

This is one of the most useful courses around for every engineer, scientist, and researcher. However, it appears that this fundamental experimentation methodology is not being taught in every standard university curriculum. It was never covered in all my background in computer science, engineering, and research, neither at the bachelor's, nor postgraduate levels. A great addition!

The course is very well taught, and provides extensive learning material, including lecture notes, and a PDF copy of a complete course manual by the author. Thank you very much, prof. Kevin Dunn.

By Vikas S

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Nov 21, 2020

It is a fantastic course ane must take. This course will check your patience as well as your zeal to attempt the quizzes. The quizzes are really hard but when you keep trying you will be highly satisfied at the end. Highly recommended to all the students who want to learn how to design an experiment. I learned the important stuff and now I will start to design my first experiment

By Steven Z

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Apr 11, 2019

Satisfying course content and structure. Reasonable course speed. Nice, practical reference. Good introduction to design of experiments and response surface methods.

By Oladimeji T

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Sep 9, 2022

This is the most mentally rewarding MOOC I have ever taken

By Pablo C M

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Mar 12, 2017

Highly recommended introductory course for anyone getting into experimentation. I found the starting point appropriate for total novices (though for someone with some background, the pacing felt very slow and repetitive at times), but there was a well-defined progression from the simplest to more advanced concepts.

I would have appreciated some more theoretical content, both foundational and advanced, and the pacing/structure could use some rethinking to avoid staleness, but overall this is a very nice introduction to important aspects of design of experiments and optimization.

By Achim T

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Jul 31, 2022

This is an excellent course that gives a great introduction to a topic that is relevant in a wider area of industries and that is slowly peing picked up in academic research as well. The accompanying material does not succumb to the temptation of trying to look more important by obfuscating information with unnecessarily xomplex vocabulary or structure, while at the same time not dumbing down the topic. I can highly recommend this course to anyone who is starting off in research or development. Even those who have been using well designed experimental strategies for a long time, will benefit from the carefully written material and the excellent advice from the team that has built this course.

By Tanya V

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Oct 17, 2022

Great explanations! I did not follow Statistics suring my Masters, I am very happy that I understand what is happening "behind the statistical software". I like a lot that the examples given are taken from our daily life. It shows that experimentation for improvement finds an application in many places - from the household to the lab! I would recommend this course to everyone that wants to gain understanding in the design of experiments or is chasing improvement in any aspect of life.

By Alamin B

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Aug 18, 2015

Experimentation for process improvement is an excellent course and it will make a better and wiser experimenter. My background is in healthcare field and medicine and after taking this course it help to critically appraise and read article related to research in medicine. This is my first verified certificate course and i always revisit the materials whenever i need them. This is a must attend course and you would enjoy it as i have enjoyed it.

By West P

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Feb 25, 2019

Kevin was superb! It was so obvious that he had deep knowledge and experience on Experimental Design because he was able to explain the concepts in layman's terms without making it overly simple. I also appreciated how he used diverse examples in terms of the kinds of experiments used, despite his background in engineering. Thank you, Kevin! I am excited to apply what I have learned here in my work.

By Adrienne H

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Jun 5, 2020

Fantastic course taught in a straightforward, logical manner. Starts out simple but gets progressively more complex through each module. I am DEFINITELY going to use the concepts from this class in my job and maybe even in my day-to-day life!

I love that there isn't pressure to complete quizzes on time (I took MUCH longer than the Coursera-estimated time, but in doing so I learned much more).

By Josseant F C

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May 26, 2022

Excellent course on experimental design focused on optimization. Topics included such as factorial and fractional factorial design, center composite design and response surface are included starting from basic (hand-made calculations) to more advanced calculations aided by computer using R statistical software. Great help for my thesis and for future career projects. Thanks Kevin!

By chintan

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Jan 7, 2017

This course is an excellent starting platform for those, who wants to learn more about process optimization. The designing, of course, is excellent and examples are straightforward and easy to understand in each module. I hope tutor, of course, Kevin Dunn, will come with some more advanced course for same. I will like to thank Dr. Kevin Dunn and his team for such making such course.

By Deleted A

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Oct 27, 2015

This is one of the best organized course on the subject. It is vast and complicated area , however thanks to Kevin for making it so simple , most beautiful part is, the way Fractional Factorial has been introduced and integrated into course.

Once completed students would be leave with a deep first level knowledge to take it forward. Once again thanks for a beautiful course.

By Vilmantas G

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Oct 9, 2015

This course is worth learning.

I like this course as It is really applicable, very well prepared, the ideas are presented in a clear way. I would definitely choose this course again (and recommend to my friends), despite the fact that I had to spend really a lot more time, than on other coursera courses, i.e. ~3-6 hours studying the material.

By Eduardo P

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Dec 13, 2017

Covers the most important and practical aspects of experimentation, and the use of R really is a plus here. I would definitely recommend this either if you're new to experimentation or if you have some background, a great way to learn from processes and improve them, and the case studies really emphasize the practical aspect in this course.

By Kudzayi M

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Feb 10, 2018

Course is well planned, the lectures are clear and no steps are skipped during explanation. A good and fair challenge. I have definitely grown in knowledge and confidence in regards to design of experiments, I do recommend purchasing the certificate as this course is more than worth it, all be it for a free! Thank you Kevin!