DR
Sep 27, 2024
This course was really helpful in make me understand all the topics of Python from scratch, including the slightly advanced topics, of APIs, for my level as a freshman just getting settled in college.
MA
May 16, 2020
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.
By Thomas G W
•May 25, 2023
Overall a very good intro to the power of Python. I'm a SAS programmer and this course helped me get a handle on object oriented languages and how the relate and differ from SAS, as an example. I really liked that I didn't have to download or prepare anything on my computer to use python for the course, it was all handled in virtual spaces. I didn't give 5 stars just because there was some inconsistency in the ramping up of the labs, or the quizzes at the bottom of the labs. Some of the labs were very easy and then boom, suddenly I'm being stretched way beyond in the next task to perform. They were useful learning tasks, but it was pretty jarring.
By Martin P
•Jul 10, 2023
First of all, I feel happy to learn.
I know I'm not supposed to say how to teach, but I got the impression that most of the "Python for Data Science, AI & Development" program was very fast. The videos are super fast, I know I can pause but I think it was going against my learning.
The Hands-on labs helped to understand a lot. In that sense, I think that videos should be used to complement or highlight crucial information instead of repeating the content twice.
And for someone who doesn't know Python programming, it was a crash course.
In any case, I appreciate the opportunity and the Coursera platform with the labs available to work online are excellent.
By Volodymyr C
•Jun 15, 2019
Really nice pace - simple to follow and labs were cool (some issues with the lab notebooks not loading up - not sure what the issue was here, but continuously trying to open them seemed to open them finally). The final assignment needed a bit of critical thinking towards the end, as there was no prior teaching of linking IBM Cloud to IBM Watson, so inputting codes from one site to another was awkward and felt hit-and-miss (thinking, wait, is this what they want me to do, or is it this?). Overall, a wonderfully-designed Python introductory course with a couple of teething issues with notebooks. I would recommend the course.
By Tsehay H
•Mar 4, 2020
This course was very helpful and full of valuable information. However, I would have appreciated more instances of directed practice. Maybe a few more scenarios in order to practice what I have learned. The labs were very helpful in illustrating each lesson but there was little practice available. I enjoyed using IBM Watson, it seems very useful however some of the instructions were unclear and having to create new accounts for each task was a bit annoying given that I would definitely have to signup to use the services in any substantial manner.
All in all, it was a good course but it could definitely be improved upon.
By Saman S
•Jan 13, 2023
Luckily, I was familiar with python when I started this course, so I could review and understand quickly. But I can easily imagine that it can be a headache for a real beginner. Lots of contents are being taught in a fast pace in short videos, which can be confusing for a beginner. Also the examples could have been a lot simpler and clearer. Sometimes the examples even confused me about a topic that I already knew about perfectly.
Overall, if a beginner spends enough time on this course and keeps searching and reading about the concepts, it can be a very useful source of knowledge! Cheers
By Gary N
•May 25, 2020
There is a lot of good learning to be had in this course. There is also a lot of improvement needed to ensure that the instructions in the course align with the IBM Watson web pages, menus, and instructions. It delays progress because one must try to figure out how to do what the instructions say given that IBM Watson's website has changed since this course was written. Also, just a note - for videos associated with IBM, there are an an awful lot of typos and "misspoken" sentences. A good overall review is needed. That said, I really did enjoy the course once I got into the real learning.
By Fatma F E S
•Oct 3, 2022
The course is shallow but quite broad i.e. it covers a lot but just gives you very few basics of the topics. It would be quite helpful to note the topics that are covered and use them as guidelines of what to know during your studying journey.
The labs are very very helpful and you might find yourself spending a couple hours on a lab that should supposedly take you 15 min :D. Varies from person to person though so it's all good as long as you come in with the goal of learning rather than just getting your name on the certificate.
All the best on your journeys.
By Tommi J
•May 15, 2020
The videos and practice notebooks were well made and informative in a concise way. Even though I had already done Python programming before, I had never taken a basic course on it so it was useful to get a structured intro to some of the basic ways of data structure manipulation that I wasn't aware of. My main minus point comes from the final assignment which is a bit too easy - given the fact that it's a programming assignment you could make an automatic grading system like on many other programming courses on Coursera and make the assignment more challenging.
By Anna C
•Jul 14, 2019
The course was very informational. I loved the layout of video (intro), then lab (hands on and interactive experience), then quiz (testing what you learned). The only thing I did not like was Week 5 where we worked with Watson. It seemed like we were working on things that we did not learn throughout the course. I would have preferred if we were able to continue working in a python environment outside Watson and using information we actually learned in the course. To be honest, the end of the course was quite frustrating. Overall though, great! Thanks.
By Muhammad S H
•Nov 13, 2023
The course is overall nice, but at some points in hand-on lab the exercises jumps to new functions which has not been discussed previously. Furthermore, there is a bit of repetition in between videos, reading material, and hands-on lab. In between the repetitions there are some new points, which is good, but at the same point you might skip them thinking you have already went through it. I feel it should have more exercises with gradual difficulty curve. These are my concerns, but the course is really nice to go through the basic concepts
By Colette C
•Feb 7, 2020
I really enjoyed the subject matter in this course. Sometimes the information presented in the videos is presented in a rapid fire manner, which makes it challenging to follow the line of thought (I'm a complete beginner to computer science/data science). Also, I (along with other students) experienced some frustration with labs not working/loading. However, when trying again a day or 2 later, it seemed to work without any glitches. The final project was enjoyable, but I wish there had been a lab similar to the dashboard project.
By Ninh N
•Aug 1, 2020
The course does a good job with teaching you the general basics of Python. Unfortunately, it doesn't go into details as I had hoped. Moreover, I was disappointed that the final project relies heavily on the lessons learned near the end of the course. Nevertheless, it is a good course since it can be quite challenging for beginner programmers. For instance, you need to retain all the previous knowledge you obtained each lessons. Also, there isn't only one way to find a solution as you will learn in the final project.
By Kostas A
•Nov 25, 2020
Functions and Classes lab questions were slightly harder than the rest of the programming labs. It would have been so much better if every time I was running the test code to see if I had built the appropriate function/class, what was the output. Not being able to see the output I didn't know what I had to change on my code to make it right so it took me a while to go through these labs.
Also I had some issues with the two IBM's APIs. I couldn't make them run, I'm not sure why.
However, overall it is a great course!
By Hi
•Jan 14, 2019
This course is pretty much an overview/an introduction to Python. I feel overwhelmed with new concepts and content in week 3 & 4. For assignments and tests, you just need to know that instructors will write complex codes/functions for you and you are tested only on simpler codes at this stage. I found the homework submission on week 5 very interesting and helpful for me to know the implication of using python and libraries in real life. Also, you will discover new solutions to the problems from the peer rating.
By akshay s
•Oct 11, 2020
Excellent for those who doesn't know even basic of python, Thanks to the instructor who make it very easy using a beautiful presentation. Nice and very interactive labs consisting more Gifs that make coding really enjoyable.I never feel like I studying something but I feel I just playing with the codes. However I deduced one star from it due to there is lack of information available in-order to create the dashboard in IBM cloud.Overall course is really good with an awesome case study as assignment at the end.
By Girish V G
•Dec 3, 2021
The first 4 weeks are fine.. But last week, no proper explanation is given for the "Hands on lab".. Few things are explained in the videos but while doing Hands On lab, we see that such concepts are not explained in the video.. So, the final week is really not up to the mark.. Instead of APIs, they could have covered some other topic or if APIs were so important, then they should have clearly explained each and every line in the "Hands on lab".
Other wise, the first four weeks are somewhat ok ok..
By Kostiantyn V
•Sep 22, 2023
4 stars, because in general the course is well structured(as well as specialisation), packs you with all the necessary skills to strat Data Science journey...BUT the labs! They are in Jupyter Notebooks, which is good, but the labs have a lot of code snippets, which a beginner-level student doesn't need to see. Not to mention certain coding moments are outdated. My suggestion-provide a student with simpler, but with such tasks, which are possible to recreate in any Jupyter Notebook from scratch.
By Yogi W
•Mar 4, 2021
Some modules seemed disjointed and this shows in the Lab sessions where the difficulty levels varied (some were for beginners - as the course intended- whereas others were more intermediate). For the intermediate level Lab sessions, they were sometimes discouraging as it could make programming novices such as myself find the exercises too difficult. Otherwise, a great overview of Python for data science. Students are encouraged to already have some prior Python knowledge beforehand
By Jarosław K
•May 29, 2022
Although I already knew basics of Python, the tasks related to data analysis were cool and engaging. The only thing that I really did not like were time estimates for labs. I mean, have anyone verified that? For example, it was stated that the lab should take around 15 minutes. Maybe 15 minutes it is when you DON'T READ anything and just blindly hit shift+enter. For me, to analyse those labs, make notes, check the code, it took a couple of hours. And it was a good thing, though.
By RaÃssa B T
•Jul 20, 2020
The final task using IBM Watson Cloud was very confusing to me so that it take me almost 5 hours to solve the problem. The dealing with Python in the task was not a big deal: the real problem was IBM Cloud setup for hosting my Dashboard as .html and this was not the most important part of a Python course. All the rest of the course was quite useful and helpful. You team could make more intuitive this part of hosting to make the course the great course of Python it can be.
By Yinghao Z
•Sep 9, 2021
Overall, the content is well-illustrated with full of hands-on labs. It's easy to be understood by students who are new to Python programming. But the coding format in lab notebooks is not good. For example, there are many things like "df =pd.read_csv()", where there should be spaces at both left and right. Also, I expect in the function part, there should be some contents regarding lambda function. And there should be list comprehensive which I think is very useful.
By Amy P
•May 4, 2019
This course provided a very helpful summary of basic Python concepts. For a beginner, I would imagine that the lecturer went too fast. I had to pause and rewind multiple times per section, just to process what was being said.
The labs (in Jupyter notebooks) were by far the highlight of this course, with lots of practical examples. As many people have commented, the final project is a bit tricky and has less to do with Python than with understanding IBM data storage.
By Devesh K
•Feb 23, 2020
As a 5 week course it lacked content and detailing, specially introducing python and pandas. Most people including me already have a working knowledge of python so it doesn't matter but the course should have been designed to include all learners in mind.
The course also forces the IBM Watson platform to the learners, I enjoyed it but felt that the gradable assignments should be allowed to be submitted in an alternate format like uploading a .IPYNB notebook
By Marco N
•Nov 2, 2021
This is one of the better courses of the set. The videos actually go into a lot of detail on Python that even a person with absolutely no programming experience should be able to get. I took away a star as I feel as the Pandas portion needs a lot more coverage. Pandas was only briefly skimmed through, and it did not get into merging, which is one reason why you want to use Pandas over a Dictionary. Furthermore, the Pandas portion did not have any labs.
By Noelene N
•Feb 14, 2020
Explanation and guidance are very detailed - not much chance to go wrong.
I completed the 5 week course in 3 days partly because it was easy to follow, partly because I could work on it most of my day and partly because the course is pitched at someone who has no knowledge of data structures and programming functions. I know those but are new to Python. I would have liked an additional module explaining how to set up my own Python environment.