Very good thank you

Very informative and presented by respected individuals with a passion for the field. The only critique is that the material might be a little outdated as it seems to have been created around 2014-2015.

It does in fact answer a basic, fundamental question; what is Data Science?

Was ok.

1) For what it was, (predominantly opinion videos) you could probably stand to remove a couple of the videos from the two professors, (especially the second one) without changing the overall effectiveness of the course.

2) You might want to work with that second professor, (or just edit the appropriate video) to remove the clear disdain he expresses toward statisticians since a) they're at least just as much a part of data science as computer scientists and are thus due the same degree of respect, and b) some / several of the people taking this course, (such as me) come from a statistics background, and it's really not a good idea to require us to sit there and watch while this prof decides to backhand us all with his not only inappropriate, but, more importantly, inaccurate statements - really not a good way to help us feel welcome as part of the program.

3) The final question on the final exam was -horribly- rote and pedantic. I get that you're trying to find something that's easy to peer review, but really - one random person's opinion on how to format a paper? That was about as unimaginative / uninteresting as you could possibly get and only goes further into making data science seem like it's going to be an incredibly boring-to-other-than-totally-left-brained-control-freak humans. How about easing it up a bit on the precise content and let people answer more about the Voltaire discussion, (i.e. thinking about how you want to present the results even before writing the report)? How about having people talk about the first professor's discussion of what he did with the Toronto busses - going off on his own to acquire priorly-unrelated data to determine correlations? These are the kinds of things that are going to help someone become a good data scientist later in life, not whether they could list 10 italicized bullet points about how precisely one form of report, (i.e. a very formal, long form - often only used in its entirety in academia and generally inappropriate in other contexts).

I genuinely enjoyed this course, but the quizzes are absolutely irrelevant and petty to the point of absurdity. How is attributing a quote to Hal Ronald Varian going to make me a better data scientist? How is know the specifics of one person's research about houses relevant in the massive field of data science? Your quizzes need to focus on key concepts instead of minutiae

It's a decent course if you don't know why you want to go into data science but if you have an idea, then it's just listening to other people talk about why they like the field without teaching you much.

Broad review of the definition of data science. Can easily get the same information from a quick Google search. Week 3 was the most useful.

Many interviews, nice chats, but not so much content. I was expecting some more theory/practice, not so much documentary.

The course itself is too general; you complete the course and it's hard to say you actually learned something new. The exercises are extremely easy, you could easily skip all the videos, open the text for each assignment and answer. Furthermore, the testemonials appear to be randomly picked students who say what they think they're supposed to say, or just give their own opinion; this contributes very little to the viewer's actual learning. An introductory video to data science would've had the same outcome as this entire course.

The course has a very basic approach. It's much more basic than I have imagined and to be honest it is not worth paying for. Everything taught here could be learnt on youtube in 1 or 2 hours. I was expecting basic exercises using data science tools, I mean, the same approach used by academic books: first you learn some concepts and then you make some exercises, then you proceed to the next topic. I'm not saying that what was presented was not good, it was great. But it could have been much deeper.

The course was very generic and high level. I learned a few things, but the information is generally only useful to someone who is coming into the topic of Data Science with zero knowledge. Rather than having this course as part of the specialization, it would make more sense as a recommended prerequisite for those looking for a general overview of data science. Quizzes felt like busy-work, testing arbitrary facts from the reading in many cases.

It would have been more time-effective for me to read the Wikipedia page on data science than spend the time watching these videos. The videos are much too basic with absolutely nothing technical and a fair amount of repetition of the themes across all weeks, for example, needing to be a good storyteller. The entire three module course could have easily been condensed to one module and something more substantial could have been added instead.

Mostly awful. The majority of the videos are just college professors talking about "curiosity, and passion for data analytics" No concrete examples, just a lot of fluff. Actual verbatim: "A data scientist does data science" The quizzes are a joke. This honestly felt like a waste of time. I'm no closer to learning the "hard skills" necessary to become a data scientist than at the beginning of the course.

I wouldn't spend much time on this course. Although it is informative, it is filled with marketing for IBM and lengthy and sometimes repetitive interviews with people who work in this field. I'd rather skip these and jump to the real learning, software and analytics skills. Most people who are taking these courses already know this stuff and plus all this information is available for free online.

Extremely basic and introductory course that does not really give very much valuable information.

Also, the peer graded assignment format is not suited (is not optimal) in my humble opinion for self-paced courses, as i do not want to have to wait for another person to review my work in order to receive the certificate... Just take a look at the discussion threads...

Very thorough for anyone who is interested, but doesn't know what data science is. However, it is mind-numbingly basic and most of the reading is more theoretical application than instruction. Way too long of a course for how little information there was. The quizzes were frustrating, as well, as they simple referred to the reading, but didn't reinforce concepts.

Very basic introduction. Would have liked a little more substance than just the QnA section with some people in the field and a couple short readings. This entire course could have been the first week in a real course. I also think the quizzes could have been better. They just copy paste sections of the reading to make sure you read the reading assignments.

Actually all 3 weeks' contents could be covered in one video and 3-4 readings. I don't know why there're so many short videos in such an unstructured way. Too many not-so-important materials which should be reorganised to save learners' time.

This course proves a general introduction to the field of data science. The information is not particularly useful. The quizzes questions are trivial and irrelevant.

Mostly opinions about what data science is, rather than exercises to develop hard skills and deep knowledge.

All the quizzes had nothing to do with data science and more to do with reading comprehension ability

Huge wast of Time To be honest

Really disappointed with the whole specialisation... I am leaving this review here because probably you might not check the others courses before you start it.

Specialisation is short and it is the only good thing about it. It took me I think 10-12 hours to do it.

So first of all the whole thing is not really informative. A lack of videos - Most of the time there is only "power-point"presentation with code written on it. I don't really understand why they have narrator who just read text - no emotions almost like a machine.

Courses:

1. You will spend a lot of time learning listening to videos about how sexy is to be data scientist... and that parents start sending their daughters for data science (sic!), and that it is a new science... Plus some rather simple information which you rather know taking into consideration you want to study it online. At least it is nice to watch - there is life in it.

2. You will spend the whole course watching different notebooks like jupyter R studio etc . without really learning any useful stuff. In the end you will just click run to create some already written commands in python. Yeap that's it. I know it is intro but adding 1 +1 third time in different console...

3. You will learn some methodology - A lot of complicated knowledge read by narrator who is not making it easier or more interesting. Almost like somebody reading you technical book...

4. SQL - you will try to learn it from presentations. I think there are no proper videos just images in narrated power point presentation. I watched some coursera lectures about sql before but still I had problems with following it. To make it worst you will have to use IBM products which are FREE - other reviews are probably outdated. The problem is that materials from this course are also outdated. So they are presenting you IBM tool-set which is already different. It is a problem because they are not even trying to show how they work just where to click.

I managed, you will too but, IBM, please do better.

This was an absolutely miserable process. The course and tests are more akin to elementary school reading comprehension exams than actual tools for teaching and evaluating students. It is absolutely unbelievable that this passed and acceptable and to the standard for IBM. I learned absolutely 0 useful information, completed the entire course in under an hour, and have nothing but wasted time to show for it. To top it all off one of the end exams is a peer reviewed assignment which is absolute nonsense, and the other is closer to trivia about the required readings than anything else. The cert, or badge, or whatever garbage I'll be getting for this isn't worth the electricity it took to turn on my computer and complete it. I'll be taking the easy route and get my next IBM badge from a cereal box.

Be warned!!

I took this course and completed then got my 'digital badge'. However, for me and 100's of other students (according to the forums) our grades and progress disappeared. Coursera, are telling students to report the issue but after 2 weeks and hundreds of complaints nothing has happened.

The course itself is OK but when you are PAYING it is very poor support.