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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Data Science in Python by University of Michigan

4.5
stars
26,999 ratings

About the Course

This course will introduce the learner to the basics of the python programming environment, including fundamental python programming techniques such as lambdas, reading and manipulating csv files, and the numpy library. The course will introduce data manipulation and cleaning techniques using the popular python pandas data science library and introduce the abstraction of the Series and DataFrame as the central data structures for data analysis, along with tutorials on how to use functions such as groupby, merge, and pivot tables effectively. By the end of this course, students will be able to take tabular data, clean it, manipulate it, and run basic inferential statistical analyses. This course should be taken before any of the other Applied Data Science with Python courses: Applied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python, Applied Machine Learning in Python, Applied Text Mining in Python, Applied Social Network Analysis in Python....

Top reviews

PS

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Very good course assignments and projects. Really learnt good by exploring stackoverflow and other forums to complete the assignments. Please include some detailed lectures in the upcoming modules.

YH

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This is the practical course.There is some concepts and assignments like: pandas, data-frame, merge and time. The asg 3 and asg4 are difficult but I think that it's very useful and improve my ability.

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5626 - 5650 of 5,933 Reviews for Introduction to Data Science in Python

By Kertesz J

Sep 10, 2017

I have previous programming experience, sill I find the course is very challenging for the following reasons:

- course videos are very short (40mins per week), partly related to the required assignments, not covering all topics

- you need to spend most of your time (for me 10-15 hours per week) googling and reading Stackoverflow, and you might pick up a solution which is not appropiate for your current issue

By Ted H

Jan 8, 2017

The assignments were tough and they really tested your knowledge of python. That being said, the lectures were absolutely useless. I spent 90% of my time trying to figure out python through stack overflow. The jupyter platform is also very frustrating. For whatever reason, error messages kept coming up as I was trying to complete the assignments. At one point, I lost all my work because of this error.

By Muhammad H

Jun 3, 2018

Lectures aren't helpful. Assignments are challenging which is great but there is a difference between challenging students to make them learn more or to challenge them to such extent without providing enough resources that they go weary of the material. It is important to understand that students take courses generally to learn new material, not to revise what they have already learned or forgotten.

By Stephen F

Jul 24, 2017

The content is really good, but their explanation of the topics is insanely terse; by both the professor and his graduate student. I had such high hopes for this class. I am personally able to follow the content because I have experience using pandas and only using this class as a easy way to fill gaps in my knowledge, but to the uninitiated their coverage would confuse a otherwise simple tool.

By K G P

Apr 12, 2020

The course is quite tough and is not really beginner friendly to someone who is seeking to start learning about python or data science. It's just that it is on another level. Hard to grasp onto the concepts. The assignments also are very difficult for a beginner. All in all I don't mean to be negative but this really isn't an introduction to data science course, it is on a very advanced level.

By Olatunde T

Aug 28, 2020

This course was highly challenging and took quite a lot of time and efforts to complete! The concepts were hurriedly and not properly taught and I think this need be addressed. The assignments were also too complex for an introductory course and require a lot of personal reading and searching to complete. Would recommend at least a basics in Python programming to register for this course!

By Anil P

Nov 7, 2019

I really strugled with the course; especially assignment.

There is a lot of talking and little time is spend on how the code is working. I feel anyone who is already a programmer in another language might be finding it easy follow the chapters.

I was very difficult to complete the assignments - Most of the time it felt totally outside of what has been discussed till then. (Out of syllabus)

By 李玉鹏

Apr 29, 2018

This course is too easy for me. But if you are a beginner you will find it difficult.

I download all the materials and try my best to complete all the assignment without watching the final part and submit them at almost the same time cause I find it joyful.

To be honest, read the book entitled Python For Data Analysis 2nd may be a better choice instead of watching these tuition videos.

By cheting c

Mar 2, 2018

Very unresponsible professor. No passion at all!!!!! Did not explain the fundamental concept well. As a result, I do not think I have a deep understangin at all. I spend most my time google in order to finish my assignments.

I give him the second star only because I the way he designed those challenging assignments. He should include some skill needed to finish the assignments.

By Apurva k p

May 7, 2020

According to me this course will be not good for beginners , i m not telling for who is absolute beginners in programming world but it is also difficult for who just completed the python from scratch and enter into in this course.The instructor was too fast (i know that we can reduced the video speed, so don't suggest that).here i m not able to point out whole thing.

By Rolando C

Aug 28, 2020

The depth and amount of knowledge delivered in class versus the level of complexity of the assignments, leaves the student with a very high degree of research, which is always good, however, it must have a balance.

I do not agree with leaving most of the learning on the research side, you should keep in mind that students may have little knowledge about the subject.

By Marcin W

Oct 29, 2016

Very good lectures and examples. Horrible autograder - very stiff and all results must be in a very strict order and format. Extremenly vague questions prone to misinterpretation.

Most of the time is not spent on analysing data or coding but trying to understand the autograder and questions. The stress should be somewhere else. As a whole poorly prepared course.

By Alexander P

Apr 16, 2020

1. Jupiter notebook constantly loses touch and you have to reload the page, and you have not saved the last changes ...

2. Outdated versions of Panda are used and who knows what else, so if you are not completing the task in their notebook, this can be a problem, as for me.

3. The background with people at video lectures distracts from the lecturer's words

By Fabio K

Apr 5, 2018

I learned a lot taking this course but it requires a lot of work from the student. The video lectures have little contents and are somewhat superficial and the assignments are somewhat confusing. One must read a lot about the assignments in the forum otherwise it's impossible to complete them. It took me tens of hours of hard work before I learned that.

By Anna N

Aug 16, 2020

I think the assignments really help you learn a lot! But there isn't much help or aide at all from the classes. You basically have to learn everything on your own with no help, and the forum is rarely ever useful. So I would not recommend taking this class unless you are already used to using Pandas and are very advanced or intermediate with python.

By Andrea K

Mar 22, 2021

Most of the topics are not really explained but just read out. Actual learning has to be done by reading and searching the web. The assignments are unclear and the whole course takes much longer than the given time. The best thing about this course is the teaching staff that gives fast and individual help when you run into problems (which is often)

By Oscar F R P

Jul 26, 2020

The autograder works with a pandas version thats very old so you must learn how to code in pandas 0.8 while most PCs now hace Pandas 1.5. It also is too picky and shows little information about the errors, you'll need to dig up infromation from 3-4 years worth of forum entries.

THE COURSE IS INTERESTING BUT ITS BLOODY ANNOYING AND FRUSTRATING!

By Fouad S

Dec 10, 2017

For an Introduction class, this is way too advanced. the course material are minimal. while this might be for a targeted audience, its fine to keep the videos at this length, but at least add some further readings/videos from other sources. Providing a bit more structured learning is way better than leaving students lost at assignments.

By Neha P

Feb 5, 2022

While I did learn some new things in this course, the material / pacing and especially the assignments were organized very poorly. Instead I would recommend just going through Wes Kinney's book (which is referenced in the course as reading material), for better explanations / better examples, and a much better understanding of concepts.

By Myles A S

Aug 9, 2020

I found this course heavy going. There were no notes and I could not afford the recommended textbooks. I found myself having to search for information in the videos in order to complete quizzes and assignments. I passed the course, but have opted to do the IBM Professional Certificate instead of continuing with the specialisation.

By Samuel B

Oct 21, 2019

The material is fine. However, the reason I rate it so low is that there are no practice problem that it walks you through. It gives you assignments and expects you to go and solve. I know how to search for random questions with Stack Overflow already. I was looking for a detailed course on how to do it; not just talk about it.

By Baptiste G

Mar 17, 2019

The course and content is by itself ok / good. The time needed for doing the exercise is quite long and the automatic grading is not straightforward.

So i spend a lot of time debugging my code to have functional code to the robot checker and not just to make it work (Very true for Week 3).

Not my favorite mooc i have complete.

By Tobias S

Nov 17, 2022

Only Video, no other Content. This results in typing every Line of Code manually to your own personal Notes like you would from a Chalk Bord. And you will need Notes, when you want to succeed in Tests and get the Syntax right. This is just some unnecessary Overhead. Not my Type of Learning and a little bit out dated...

By Hans R

May 20, 2018

The grader is pretty frustrating for no apparent reason, when checking a data frame have it check for equality row by row and be specific when asking questions. I suggest you make the questions return smaller size answers that can easily be checked. The course itself is OK but as a whole it is not that great.

By Vlad P

Jul 14, 2017

There's a big mismatch between stuff they teach and what you're required to complete. Skills learned: dealing with annoying and obscure stuff produced by grader and reading forum. Suggestions for authors: simplify and/or write better grading code; review your own instructions by giving clear examples.