I learned a whole lot, but the course wasn't easy, chiefly because of reasons beyond the subject matter. Some lectures were really hard to follow. I get that English is not some of these guys' native language (it's not mine either), so they can't make everything as information-dense as native speakers, but there were a number of confusing parts, mostly in the pseudo code or the general explanation of the algorithms, especially in the Dynamic Programming module.

It was an OK experience and I learned quite a bit, but I'll probably be dropping this specialization in favor of another one that tackles similar subject matter.

I've given only 3 stars because of the two reasons:

1) Grader for programming assignments is very language specific. I submitted java code and the response was "failed case", when I submitted the same code using python I got my grade. This happened many times with me.

2) Sometimes explanation of few topics is very poor. I've to search for the same topic on internet for better understanding.

Still, I learned many new things and enjoyed doing programming assignments. If someone wants to learn about Algorithms from basics I'll definitely recommend this course.

Thank You

Not bad overview of greedy, d&c and dynamic algorithms however the examples within the lectures and the way they were presented was not often clear. I found much better ways of explaining these elsewhere online with more cohesive and clearly connected thought processes. I'm new to this and maybe it's just the way i think and my lack of background but the way subproblems were integrated back into main problem were either glossed over or considered so "obvious" that they weren't worth mentioning.

I really had a hard time understanding Dynamic Programming. I recoomend to remove this topic and focus more on solidifying foundations so that students can be more prepared for moving through the whole Algorithm Courses. I never heard of this topic before and the lecturer ommited many steps when explaining the Edit Distance. I was forced to look for other resources like Open Courseware Algorithms course, and this is how could understand what was dynamic programming easily. Hope this helps!

I didn't like this course much, being honest it was very useful in the very first 3 weeks and helped me to get a strong foundation in Algorithmic Toolbox, however the teachers aren't giving much details in the last few weeks, explanation is almost reciting a concept without a real expanation.. Nevertheless, I do like the assignments much they pushed me to get knowledge from various external sources and guided me to get to where I want

Overall is good course with many exercises, forum is supportive, however mentors/instructors never answered my questions (i guessed they bothered only with the very first session when course was launched) Language is sometimes overly complicated and hard to grasp the main principles of the algorithm (e.g. dynamic programming week 5) I watched youtube to understand same ideas but explained in much simpler way.

Material is good... But a bit explanation lacks while teaching by the instructors... It would have been better if more elaboration was provided... It seems that in some of the videos the instructor was just reading from the slides and not by their knowledge. I wont be recommending it if you have already a prior knowledge of the topics.

1/5 to instructors

4/5 to material

4/5 to assignments

3/5 to references

Explanation on the video is too complex, and literlly no help on the forum by the Faculty. Many threads are answered after 4 - 6 months. Even on those the reply most of the time is do the stress test.

I strongly feel this course targets only those who have an excellent programming skills, with begainner to moderate level skills, one will struggle and letterally will not get any help whats so ever.

The learning curve becomes very steep towards the end of the course. Also sometimes it's difficult to understand what the instructor is speaking and the transcripts aren't very good. The assignments need to have some more problems in the easier category as it's only by doing many problems one gets hold of a concept. Although the difficult problems help , but they tend to be more demotivating

The course is good overall but I worry that for the non technically oriented the examples are very terse and could use more visual linking and vocal guidance on what the variables in the examples actually are, and the thinking behind the code presented. There are also a ton of implementation based gotchas depending on the language that a green developer is likely to get hung up on.

the course material is incredibly hard to understand at places , as a beginner i found it very strenous to catch up and understand the solutions and thus had to extensivly rely on youtube tutorials of theory and problem statements and spent days upon days debugging programs with wrong logics. but in the end it was an incredible experience and i'm glad i pursued this course

The course is very good as in material and algorithmic challenges, but the instructors have really bad accents its very difficult to understand. I am sure they are giants in the CS field but some keep on slipping on there words others have terrabile accents others make mistakes . The best untructor i would say is AP Daniel M Kane.

Any i am honor to have taken this course.

the assignments are very good. Every assignment has different levels. these assignments are the best thing in this course and they are the main reason that i continue this course.

the explanation in this course isn't good enough. i open other sources in most of the topics to understand the course. the course explanation isn't enough to understand the course.

I am unable to use this coding platform efficiently. How to get the output,enter inputs and even thugh my assignment was fully correct,i was failed in it,just because my output was not appropriate, but after looking at the video for submission several times, things aren't clear about submission most probably about output.

Week 5 and week 6 videos and tutorials were not clear enough for anyone who was getting into dynamic programming first time. It was not properly organised and the videos were barely of any help. Other than that rest of the course was good and helpful. I would have given it 4 stars if it weren't for the last 2 weeks.

The programming assignments are top-notch. Really tests your algorithmic skills. That being said, I didn't find the instructors explaining the algorithms clearly. They were vague in that aspect. They would just tell what is in the slide and would not make efforts to clarify the tedious parts of the algorithm

The content is very good. But I don't understand the material well in weeks 4 and 5. Maybe you need to emphasize a bit on it, and put a little bit extra effort in the slides to make the algorithms more intuitive and more understandable. Also, maybe split the idea behind an algorithm into more than one video.

Content is good, but could probably make it more fun to learn instead of just run through the theorem and pseudo code. The tone of the narrative is always the same like I am listening to someone with no emotion, and it sometimes makes me sleepy. Now I occasionally play the videos just to fall asleep faster.

While the content is fine and the assignments do help with learning algorithms, I feel that the teaching material is quite lacking and dry at times - to the point where discussions and some external hints go a long way in guiding the learner to truly understanding the assignments and underlying concepts.

I rate this course 3-star because the good aspects er that the instructors explained the problems very clearly but the assignments were pretty tough but I kept failing and it showed me I failed the test cases, but the did not define what are my problems and for that this was very frustrating for me.

I like the fact that we get to solve many problems on our own every week but in all the lectures, instructors explain things only vocally and it's also very fast paced. It was really difficult to follow compared with lectures where instructors write on the white board while they are explaining.

The professors are good, but more instructions and guidance is needed, programming by itself is not easy, then, combining it with algorithms make things even harder. Some lectures were more understandable than others, overall the content is good but the structure of the course could be better.

I had already done "Algorithms: Design and Analysis Part 1", so this course was not as good as that one.

This course had lot of programming questions, which I find very good to have for any course. I just hope next courses of the specialization will be beneficial for my career.

From a beginner's point of view , course explanation on concepts are good, but their explanation on programming is very confusing and not clear .This is a good course to understand the concepts on a beginner level , but doesn't give you a clear idea on a deeper level.

there is no reply after i asked a question in the forum.

the instructors in the videos could have made the explanation a bit simpler and more graphical representation for the algorithm could have been used. it would really help lot of people understand better e.g- me