Chevron Left
Back to Mathematics for Machine Learning: PCA

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Mathematics for Machine Learning: PCA by Imperial College London

4.0
stars
3,098 ratings

About the Course

This intermediate-level course introduces the mathematical foundations to derive Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a fundamental dimensionality reduction technique. We'll cover some basic statistics of data sets, such as mean values and variances, we'll compute distances and angles between vectors using inner products and derive orthogonal projections of data onto lower-dimensional subspaces. Using all these tools, we'll then derive PCA as a method that minimizes the average squared reconstruction error between data points and their reconstruction. At the end of this course, you'll be familiar with important mathematical concepts and you can implement PCA all by yourself. If you’re struggling, you'll find a set of jupyter notebooks that will allow you to explore properties of the techniques and walk you through what you need to do to get on track. If you are already an expert, this course may refresh some of your knowledge. The lectures, examples and exercises require: 1. Some ability of abstract thinking 2. Good background in linear algebra (e.g., matrix and vector algebra, linear independence, basis) 3. Basic background in multivariate calculus (e.g., partial derivatives, basic optimization) 4. Basic knowledge in python programming and numpy Disclaimer: This course is substantially more abstract and requires more programming than the other two courses of the specialization. However, this type of abstract thinking, algebraic manipulation and programming is necessary if you want to understand and develop machine learning algorithms....

Top reviews

WS

Jul 6, 2021

Now i feel confident about pursuing machine learning courses in the future as I have learned most of the mathematics which will be helpful in building the base for machine learning, data science.

JS

Jul 16, 2018

This is one hell of an inspiring course that demystified the difficult concepts and math behind PCA. Excellent instructors in imparting the these knowledge with easy-to-understand illustrations.

Filter by:

726 - 750 of 773 Reviews for Mathematics for Machine Learning: PCA

By Deleted A

•

Jan 31, 2020

I don't know if this course has been deliberately made hard to understand or I was lacking something. Lectures were pretty useless to me. Coding exercises were not clearly defined. I felt utterly frustrated at times.

By Ashlee H

•

Nov 26, 2019

You'll likely catch on pretty early that this course will mostly expects you to learn the content elsewhere. You're paying for mostly just for assignments and quizzes which there are far more of than video lectures.

By Ed W

•

Nov 25, 2019

The lectures gave incomplete information for the understanding of the material and the homework assignments. Wish this course was stretched to be a 10 week course so that we can all thoroughly learn the material.

By Christiano d S

•

Aug 10, 2020

The lessons are not clear and if one wants to learn and understand what is going on with the math/algebra, has to study with other resources, because the videos of this course just throw up info´s on screen.

By Kimberely C

•

Dec 27, 2019

Definitely, not for beginners. Just as bad as the last one. They need to have more examples, which walk you through the ones like they give you on the homework as well as an example of how to do Python.

By Gurrapu N

•

Apr 9, 2020

There is hardly any co-relation between videos and assignments, while the lectures were at high school level but the assignments were at graduate level. It is high time to revise the course contents.

By Marcin

•

Aug 19, 2018

By far the worst online course that I've ever done. Assignments require a lot of experience in Python, which is not communicated upfront. At the same time, staff doesn't provide any actual support.

By Matheus d A

•

Aug 10, 2023

This course is extremely buggy, with ill-posed assessment and template code that rarely works. It is a shame to finish a super fun specialisation with such a poorly designed learning experience.

By Danielius K

•

Sep 24, 2019

You will spend most of your time lost.

Quizes are not clear and ill-prepared.

You will need to spend a lot of time looking for material outside of the course to actually make progress.

By Si L

•

Oct 9, 2021

This is the worst course of the specilisation. Content is conveyed poorly. This reminds me of why I always hated math. Not because math is dry or boring but the way is communicated.

By Simon J H

•

May 30, 2021

Nowhere near the standard of the first two Courses in this specialisation.

The videos & practise exercises do not even come close to preparing you for the assignments.

By Vikram G

•

Dec 27, 2022

The prgramming assignments dont work at all. This course is not updated. Very poor performance by Imp college London. The coursework is just on the surface level.

By Saransh G

•

Apr 28, 2020

1. Not intuitive like first two programs

2. The assignments sometimes jumped concepts and were not cohesive

3. The in-lecture problems seemed rushed through

By David S

•

Feb 22, 2024

Riddled with technical issues that have gone unresolved for a long time. Very disappointing after the excellent first two courses in the specialisation.

By Ar-Em J L

•

Nov 13, 2022

This was the most painful course in the whole specialization. From the very confusing lecture to the plethora of submission errors in the assignments.

By Tai J Y

•

Nov 16, 2019

This course is not like other two, which explain much clearly. When I do the practice quiz and coding, I resort to find other help on the Internet.

By Vibhutesh K S

•

May 17, 2019

This course is really bad and extremely hard to follow. Previous two courses were executed very well, teaching quality in this is poor.

By Alejandro T R

•

Aug 2, 2020

Worst of the three courses. I learned much more on the internet because of the lack of examples or explanation. Just not worth it.

By Ananya G

•

Dec 28, 2019

I did not register in this course to have some person read out the textbooks or dictate the derivations in the lecture videos.

By Sherif B

•

May 3, 2021

Very bad experience, skips steps, does not reflect on intuitions like other courses in the specializations, monotonous.

By Yap C Y

•

Mar 7, 2021

Explanations need to be clearer. Efforts are needed in explaining the details of every components in this course.

By Chen H

•

Jul 2, 2024

the lesson is terrible and wasting my money a lot of bugs in the assignment and I really want to call one names

By Michael K

•

Nov 30, 2020

Lowest rating as the third course was absolutely poor. Low quality and in some way non-existent instruction.

By Nithin K

•

Jun 5, 2018

Too conceptual and theoretical making it difficult to understand. Examples would have helped a lot.

By Bhonesitt T

•

Feb 19, 2024

Grading problem Even My code works perfectly and it doesn't get grade can you review plz