By Perdita Stevens 6 months ago Completed (Partially)

Might possibly be worth doing in another presentation, if they fixed the problems, but the first was disappointing. It was marred by very poor organisation and attention to detail. For example: in several different pieces of work, the automatic grading system marked correct answers wrong. In one case this was eventually corrected but the correction introduced a new error! The course team did not make effective use of the Announcements page or the official course forums so students were left in the dark about what was going on. I gave up doing the assignments.

The lectures were OK, but not great, in my opinion. Overall problem seemed to be confusion about who the course is for. It's advertised as being for complete beginners, and the lectures do start very slow (but never actually explain what kurtosis is...), but at the end the pace is hugely faster and material is included that seems too advanced for a short intro stats course and wasn't really grounded properly. In practice, a high proportion of students on the course (who were still there a few weeks in) seemed to have taken stats courses before, or even taught them.

By Jonahlyn 6 months ago Completed

I actually don't agree that this class was "designed to be a friendly introduction to fundamental concepts in statistics". The lecture on descriptive statistics even states that it should be review. That doesn't mean it was a bad course. I should probably mention that it covered mostly inferential statistics and barely mentioned probability at all. Learning R was very cool. I put a lot of time into it and got a lot out of it although the mixed factorial anovas at the end almost killed me.

Good class. Highly recommended!

By Betty87 6 months ago Completed

I learned a lot, some of the things were clarified, but many still confusing. And it was a little slower.

Also that R... I did all my assignments in Excel.

But still, it's a nice one.

By Carlos Flores 3 months ago Completed

Great course! Although it may not be actually for someone without any background in statistics or programming, it was very enjoyable for me with a very basic background in statistics (i had taken a couple of courses in my BS) and some programming during highschool using visual basic and delphi, neither of them are like R o Pyhton but taught me the rigorousness of syntax and semantics in programming.

Strictly talking from the course at the end it was too much info but still was manageable. Maybe it was a bit tedious to know all the background from the examples used for statistical analysis (like the history of a basketball player or salaries in certain departments of the university) but in the end of the analysis that background made more clear and important the numbers that such analysis gave pointing out to much real conclusions and making better examples.

In my belief the course would be better if it had more time (either from the course as from the students) to explain the topics with more fundamental principles and more examples (being this the reason why I don't rate it with 5 stars).

Finally I strongly recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn statistics and has at least barely knowledge of the theme and patience to learn R.

By makoto_inoue from London, England 3 months ago Completed (Partially)

I had to drop out, partly because I joined the course in the middle and already missed deadline. I was also taking 3 other courses, so had to drop this one out.

Having said that, the instructor is passionate about the subject, and I was able to digest the content until the half way through.

I would take it again when I find more time (though new courses are keep popping out, so probably never have enough time ....

By Michal 4 months ago Completed (Partially)

Presentation and organization of the lectures was fine. Sometimes it lacked some precise definitions, but the key topics were well explained.
Working in R was almost not explained at all, only examples of how to solve some very specific tasks. Anything else was left to the student to find out. That's OK for me as a programmer, it's what I do every day, but for other people it may be more annoying.

What was really disappointing was the interactive parts of the course.
Quizzes where you wouldn't see if you answered correctly or what was wrong with your answer. Sometimes even the marking was plain wrong. How does that help learning? (I believe that should be the main benefit of quizzes, not the grades)
None of the staff were active in the discussion forum, only later I found that there was some facebook group (created by students) where staff replied from time to time. What's the point of having a discussion forum, then?
In the end, I've dropped the course after some six weeks because I simply had better things to do.

By Shishir Shakya from Kathmandu, Central Region 6 months ago Completed

It was an wonderful experience with Statistics one. This course helped to learn some basics of R, interpretation using R. I will be eagerly waiting for Statistics Two.

By Robert Komartin from Bucharest, Bucuresti 6 months ago Completed

Excellent content and outstanding teacher. However, what misses (in my view) to be perfect is the style - a bit too oriented towards the classic teaching (relatively long chunks of lessons, a bit too much emphasis on the formal testing on the concepts instead of the practical aspects of the craft, etc.).

By Bani from Toronto, Ontario 7 months ago Completed

Very good course to learn important statistical concepts. You'll learn how to interpret results in R. Good teacher.

By Gavin Conran from Portadown 7 months ago Completed

I studied Stats way back when and never fully grasped it. This well thought out and brilliantly executed course changed all that. First rate!

By Marek Stój from Wrocław 7 months ago Completed

The first part of the course was great. At the end the pace was too fast. Has potential to be a great course in statistics.