<i>I am probably not the typical student for these courses. I already work as a data scientist. Additionally, I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science, and the author of several Artificial Intelligence (AI books)</i><p>Coming from HN, this is one of the great things about Coursera courses for me. But it seems to freak out some students when the bar for top of the class is set by people with extensive professional backgrounds. [1] What can make for a corrosive environment is that there is often someone who stokes their ego by talking about how easy the course is in the forums...though this is rarely anyone at Jeff Heaton's level [or an HN'er].<p>[1] I took an introductory programming course with an HNer who had been on a c++ technical committee. But I am used to looking around the table and not seeing the dimmest bulb in the chandelier.
Google web cache: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8LyCs4hlAsYJ:www.jeffheaton.com/2014/05/review-of-the-first-three-johns-hopkins-coursera-data-science-courses/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8LyCs4h...</a>
I completed the first two courses in the first four-week block and am currently taking the third course. Mr. Heaton's review provides a really good summary of what to expect.<p>Overall, I'm also happy with the course. I was expecting a little more degree of difficulty and a little higher workload than what I've run into so far. If you're an experienced developer with a Github account, the first course can be completed in a couple of hours. The R Programming course was more along the lines of what I was expecting. So far, the third class is closer to the first than the second (in terms of difficulty...does require a bit more time).<p>Going into the course, I wasn't expecting to come out a "data scientist" ready to land a full-time job in the field. My experience so far confirms that expectation. But it's a fun course, a good way to get started in R, and a good way to spring-board your exploration into the field. It's nice to have deadlines as a motivation to keep on track and stay on a track for learning. I'm hoping by the end of the curriculum I feel confident enough to try and land some small free-lance projects.<p>I'm paying for the "official" certification. I'm not sure if it's really worth it, but at $50/class it's not putting a big dent in my finances.
To employers out there, how much does the fact that a candidate completed a Coursera/Udacity course factor into your decision to hire him? Does it matter if he paid for the certificate?
I think we are doing the specialization at the same time.<p>As an open source maintainer I can say that “question asking etiquette” is NOT common knowledge.<p>I don't have any problem with having that as a credit earning question. But I hated it when it carried 20-25% of the credit in one of the quizzes.
This course could have asked more questions in the quiz to test its students more.
Could anybody say how these compare to Andrew Ng's ml-class?
I'm almost through ml-class and I'm wondering, whether these courses add much.