The course isn't much practical.

the lab is not clear and missing

to many time spent on IBM Watson

Too fast, too vague, too broad.

Very confusing final assignment

Python coding was very less.

Very less content.No depth

only the most basic stuff

Not very user friendly

2 Modules are enough

poor instructing

robotic teaching

its very basic

Waste of time.

Too simple

Very basic

Beginner

too easy

good.

ok

The Problem with this course is that is neck tied with IBM Cloud Service. And,  IBM Cloud is horrible. You will get strangled and will not be able to finish the Course.

---more details--- It will allow you to create a user account with login.ibm.com. But will fail to create an IBM Cloud Account with Services. Error message during creation.

OK, being a persistent and waisting handful of emails you will eventually succeed once and will waste code on it. In that manner, I  was able to finish “Python for Data Science, AI & Development”, but get finally nailed down and halted for the last 4 weeks on “Tools for Data Science”.

Reason being: locked out of account. Can’t even get on login.ibm.com. IBM Help desk sends automated generic responses which don’t have anything with the problem. The creation of more additional IBM Cloud accounts has been proven futile as course code is one time only and IBM cloud service creation will result in an error.

After weeks of trying to get somebody over there at the IBM help desk to tick the box “unlock”, and not getting it, I’m forced to retire from this “Data Science Fundamentals with Python and SQL” course. I will complete this section “Tools for Data Science” using Github sharing of Jupyter Notebook, as some suggested, but other sections in “Data Science Fundamentals with Python and SQL” cannot go on without access to IBM Cloud Services. Since I have paid for this certificate, I will ask for a full refund as the course owner is blocking the completion of the course, by locking services out. Possible solutions for future encounters with the same problem: 1. Avoid the potential creation of a problem in the first place. This means, detaching the course from IBM Cloud Services and don’t create dependencies on unreliable third party services.

2. Make sure that a third party is doing the job properly if you must use them. Get the IBM Help desk sorted in a manner that the user who is being locked out can get somebody to deal with him in a timly manner (in this case timely manner means hours, not weeks as it is now)

3. Sort it on your own by improvising temporary solutions. Get the Course creator to assign additional code for the course so the user can create new services and try again. Yes, the user will still loose all of his previous work, but at least he will be able to proceed with future tasks.

---likely outcomes---

1. Probably, no one will read this, as help desks and forums are not meant to improve quality and user support. They exist for l’art pour l’art cosmetics purposes. 2. If somebody eventually reads this, he will do nothing about it, as it is not in his wage bracket. 3. Course will remain with the same problems and completion percentage as it is. 4. People will ask for their money back and avoid you in future. ---unlikely outcome--- The solution will be provided.

Kind Regards

Lots of mistakes and imprecisions. In case of technical issues, staff will leave you alone with your problem after one formal and meaningless reply. The staff does not comment more than once on a topic, even if the issue is not resolved. Get ready to work through your problems with the help of a chatbot, that is in a beta development stage.

You have to deal with Watson studio in this course. Oh, this is such a pain... I couldn't even create a new project there dew to technical issues. After getting in a dead end with Coursera stuff I tried to use IBM support and that was so fun, just check it out:

reply1:

"Hello Alexey

blah blah blah

Regards Raino Soikkeli IBM Watson Services Support"

solution provided not working

reply2:

"Hello Alexey , My name is Nigel Terry and I on following up on this ticket as my colleague Raino is off-shift at the moment.

exactly the same blah blah blah

Please confirm and I will follow up accordingly. Kind regards, Nigel "

not working again. no wonder, he gave me the same instructions the first guy did.

reply3:

"Hi Alexey, Nigel and Raino are not available at this time. I also work with the IBM Watson Studio Cloud (WSC) team. I do not have access to your services (LOL, same as previous two guys), but I can list them.

exactly the same blah blah blah"

and not working again, to no wonder.

I am thrilled to find out how many people work at IBM

I strongly suggest that you look into other providers for learning python for data science. As has been outlined by other reviewers, this is mostly a bad ad for IBM's Watson and there is little actual instruction for actually using Python. As a background I'm a EE with a lot of hardware coding experience (Verilog as well as Perl). I completed a specialization in Python from another provider and this gave me quite a bit of help as those classes were clear, with a good progression. In addition I've now written a bit of Python for work so I have a good base. This IBM course has, at best, cursory instruction on using Python, Numpy, and Pandas. The instructions are not clear, with poor sentence structure, and terrible grammar, making it difficult to follow along. Further, Watson is a confusing mess with instructions that use a prior UI, making it tough to figure out exactly what needs to be done to set up an environment. Avoid. Just avoid. Go to UMich or JHU. Anywhere but IBM. The only thing I *did* get from this class is that I don't want to go into Data Science: living in Jupyter notebooks is miserable. But then, I would also rather build things than write reports. Your mileage may vary.

I've taken a few free Python self-learning courses and was expecting higher quality here, but this one was by far the worst! It's not engaging at all, the videos consist of badly produced Powerpoint slides with a lot of mistakes in them (and every lab ends with "Congratulations, you have completed your first lesson and hands-on lab in Python", even in week 5), which has been brought up for years in the reviews, but still hasn't been addressed. The first three modules are very fundamental and not even that as they barely touch on the subject of object-oriented programming, which is absolutely essential for Python development. And out of the blue you get math thrown at you in module 4, and not in a way it makes sense, so the learning curve very suddenly becomes very steep. If you haven't turned to YouTube or other (free) resources before to learn about classes and OOP what IBM has omitted, you will probably do so now. And frankly, you should do that from the get-go instead of paying money for this course. This was disappointing, tedious and the price tag is an insolence.

I usually don't bother rating my experience and writing reviews, but this course is unacceptable and fell short in several key areas. I have a strong background in Python so I was able to get through it but I can't imagine taking this course as a beginner. Having course objectives and requirements that don't match the student's skill level is one thing, but prevailing spelling errors, lack of thoroughness and attention to detail is unacceptable, especially being endorsed by IBM. The quizzes had little effort put into their design. Instead of challenging and reinforcing the concepts covered in the lectures, the quizzes are hastily put together and lack depth. They did not effectively assess the knowledge gained from the course material. This course is disappointing and it's rather unfortunate that it takes the fun away from learning Data Science. I would NOT recommend this course to anyone, yet alone a beginner trying to learn Python for Data Science. You will have a better learning experience on YouTube.