Course focuses more on forcing you to sign up for various IBM cloud tools than learning python. The final assignment has a 300+ reply thread in the discussion forum because you are graded on the ability to integrate your IBM Watson Notebook with IBM cloud storage, but the instructions have multiple errors, such as not working if you provision your storage in the wrong region.

This class is a shameless excuse for making you sign up for products you don't want, and then grading you on your ability to use them, not your ability to write python code.

Still I don't understand the relation of the course' content and the final assignment.

In addition, I would like to see how should have been done the final assignment, i.e an example corrected and done correctly.

this is the 4th course and still I can't understand anything of python. I haven't learn anything... my money is going to the waste.

IBM says that you don't need previous knowledge of python or programming...that is a lie. I am biochemist and I have a MSc in One health, and during mi years we had lessons of R and R deducer. During that lessons, the materials given by the professors were clear and easy to follow. But this course has been awful..... I am feel like if I were an idiot but I know for sure that I am not. The problem is this rubbish course.

The worst course I took. I couldn't believe the course is provided by IBM. The slide is completely unclear and there are some small mistakes in that. And the final project is aimless, I don't know why you come up with such a project for the beginner. Anyway, I'm so disappointed with IBM and this course.

It is amazing how bad this is considering that it is marketed as an IBM product. This is not the level of quality people expect when they hear the name IBM! You'd be better off paying 9.99 for a Udemy course than taking this course. It is not in depth at all and does a stunningly poor job at building real understanding and competency. The videos and labs are full of sloppiness and errors... again, not living up to the IBM name. I don't know about y'all, but I'm probably never going to pay money for a coursera course again... not really worth it.

I had a lot of problems with the Peer Assignment, which had nothing to do with Python Programming. The Watson environment has changed a lot compared to the learning materials.

I should not recommend this Specialization, because of the difficulties with the Watson environment. I am willing to help solving the problems.

Every course has offered something interesting, challenging, and surprising. I am glad I have spent the time with this class. I would strongly recommend it to others with an interest in data science.

As in the other parts of the certificate, the tasks are simply too easy. The content in the videos (many typos!!!!) are really valuable but the tasks man... Only the surface of the surface will be discussed, no deeping down into the wild. In this course the libraries numpy and pandas are presented but in the final assignment we actually don't needed the libs... When I read the description of the final assignment, I was excited because I assumed we will need to code EVERYTHING ourselves. So really do the thinking of how to solve the requirements, testing it in a notebook out, reading the docs, discovering new cool stuff... But unfortunately my dream did not come true. The most exciting function was already provided and some of the answers were little bit of copy and paste instead of really recalling newly learned knowledge. Before this review I really wanted to give 4 out of 5 stars but after writing this review I will now give only 2 stars. Actually, 2 stars are in my opinion unfair, since the creators have put a lot of time and love in the course content. Unfortunately, so much potential is thrown away

The course content is good. However, the instructions for the final peer graded assignment are unclear. It appears to me that we were graded on our ability to interact with IBM cloud and Watson service not so much python skills also. Although I completed, I would not recommend to other until changes are made. It seems I'm not the only one that is unhappy or who had difficulties, just look at the week 5 discussion forum!

(5 stars): Course was great!!

but,

(0 stars): Instructions for IBM Watson and how to setup the assignments are outdated/incorrect. It took me less time to finish the course, and a lot more time just to figure out how to setup Watson based on the instructions (website & course material do not match). This is something that IBM can greatly improve without a lot of effort, imho.

The final assignment was an exercise in Watson, and barely on the course material :-(

This class was supposed to be for beginners and most of the information in the videos was easy to digest, however, the final project had elements and questions that were never covered. Also, there were many, many spelling and context errors in the videos and quizzes. This lead to a tremendous amount of confusion and I am not happy with this course or my grade. Please consider reviewing the lessons and final project to cater this course more to beginners.

The IBM cloud "service" leaves much to be desired. Multiple times I've experienced outages while I was in the middle of lab assignments. It's a paid course where they give you "free" credits to do the course work in their cloud "service." But the credits are inadequate for the labs and they constantly ask for your credit card to buy more "service." While the class is okay I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because of the poor IBM cloud support.

The syllabus of the course takes you in a roller-coaster ride.

From basic level to advance level and you won't feel any trouble nor hesitate a bit.

It's easy, it's vast, and it's really usefull.

Time waster, doesn't go in depth, the total video content is of less then 2 hours. The quizzes and assignments are too easy.

I recommend Lynda or youtube(derekbanas/thenewboston/CoreySchafer/telusko) or anything but not this course.

Really disappointed.

The final project at week 5 needs to be completely revamped. Poor learning experience...absolutely ridiculous and is creating tremendous frustration amongst all students.

No support from moderators, plenty of typos.

It was basic Python. You need this to be able to use Python for data science, however the name of the course could have been Python 101.

Overall, the course lectures are highly condensed and fly by very quickly. I'm familiar with Python but I still had to go back and review them a few times. Would prefer the video materials to be reviewed more slowly and deliberately.

The final project is a mess. The instructions don't direct to the correct notebook (U.S. GDP data) and that link has to be found from the forums. I could never figure out how to get the JSON credential data of my IBM Watson "bucket", so, my "dashboard" never got generated for my project. After spending several hours on this, as I had scored 100% in the rest of the course, I decided I was going to lose just a few points for this, so, in the interest of time, just moved on.

Need detailed explanation for the topics, course need to be rephrased accordingly.

it becomes easier wand clearer when one gets to complete the assignments as to how to utilize what has been learned. Practical work is a great way to learn, which was a fundamental part of the course.

The programming assignment had errors and it took a long time to figure out (e.g. wrong endpoint was specified). I ended up having to waste a lot of time on this.

Final test needs to be actually tested by instructors. Has a few bugs in it. You would learn more about python reading a book.

Python is just what is in trend and not because of its usability, but it is just anybody can use with wide use case in each and every domain. A good start for someone looking for a start with Python

Seems to teach fundamentals but the final graded assignment had very little to do with what was taught

the final assignment was extremely poorly set-up. Instructions were full of gaps, omissions, spelling mistakes. Looked like it was written by a deep-expert who assumed a lot of knowledge that you do not have at this entry level and that was nowhere made explicit. I spend many hours on a number of evenings figuring what was meant. If this lead to constructive learning, I'd be OK with it. But now it was just a long egg-hunt to figure out how I was to post something using idiosyncratic IBM infrastructure which taught me little about Python. Was this course even test driven?

Very good course for people who do not know Python. It just starts with the basic and focuses on data structures which is essential for Data Science. Does not teach you any unessential Python syntax which will not be useful in this specialization course. If you know any programming language, you will get it (because Python is easier and simpler than the language you know :)