Learner Reviews & Feedback for Mastering Data Analysis in Excel by Duke University

Good Course, but final project asks a lot for what this course is

Good intro and fundamentals, but focuses far too much on finance.

Superficial, esboça assuntos de estatística e mal fala do excel.

So many terminologies, can you talk those principles concisely?

Very hard to comprehend for 6 weeks. But could have been great.

Way too theoretical. This is Excel, not Information Theory....

Not enough practices for the unexperienced students.

Definitely way more statistics than I expected.

inclination was more towards concept than excel

Tough Course.. Need Mathematical Background

good, but no material and lack of structure

Too much theory and no excel learings.

Not so comfortable with using Excel.

It was great to have this course.

Not so relevant with real work.

It was an interesting course.

Final project really hard

Not much explanatory

Very theoretical.

good course

great!

PROS:

- Classification lecture is good;

-Weekly assignments are challenging enough

CONS

- No slides provided. Professor draws on an eletronic chalkboard (with a very bad handwriting) and you need to keep going back to videos when you are doing the homework. For me, this shows lack of professionalism and laziness

- Some excel sheets are provided. But they are very messy and badly formatted, matching the messy handwriting in the videos. AND, the instructions are for MAC! No instructions for PC are provided whatsoever. I never used MAC, so I had a very hard time!

- Very few examples real examples are provided;

- You learn math concepts, not Excel skills! Except for the LINEST function, which is very handy, BUT it's NOT TAUGHT in the videos. I had to google the function to learn it.

- They say to complete each piece of the final assingment after you finish the respective week related to that piece. But they only say that as you start week 6!

- The course doesn't provide sufficient material for the final assignment. You get stuck without knowing how to get to answers;

- Some answers to the final assignment are not correct, you check the answer sheet, and the results aren't present in the test!

OVERALL:

I'd never recommend this course to anyone. I only took it because I'm plannening to finish the specialization.

I've taken several Online Courses (5+ on Excel), and this is the worst and most frustating one by far!

An interesting course, however, undermined by the number of topics addressed that for their complexity would have deserved a more systematic and less random treatment. The course is based on several pre-compiled excel files that should be a demonstration of the theoretical topics covered. This approach does not ensure the mastery of the theory by reducing the quizzes to the mere filing of cells with predetermined formulas.

I find the part on linear regression the most catastrophic. Having personally some basis of statistics, I have somehow managed to complete the course, but the treatment, especially with regard to the concept of entropy in information theory, should be completely revised. I don't understand why Professor Eggers doesn't start from basic concepts and then expand to more complex ones instead of the opposite. The final work, despite the formulation, is almost completely incomprehensible (check on the forums to believe), as unfortunately often happens here on Coursera is judged good-natured and the general level is very low, with a wide degree of plagiarism.

Understand that this is a course in Data Analysis that utilizes excel, not a course in excel. That being said, that's not my main reason for the lower rating. The math taught in this course is not geared well to people who struggle with math. Much of the learning time is devoted to understanding the math at a theoretical level. Much of the terminology is inadequately explained, and thee are too many instances of mathematical proofing over concrete, numerical examples. What numerical examples there are tend to be deliberately specific, simple and limited because the instructor wants you to take what you learned and apply it to the more complicated problems using your own understanding. Sadly this does not work when you don't understand the math with only a few simple examples and the theoretical reason as to why it works as a reference. Additionally the mentor for the course forums has very similar problems to the professor, relying on complicated mathematical terms and definitions that mean very little to someone who wasn't able to get it the first time.

The course was a bit disappointing. We didn't cover enough advanced Excel functionalities, opting instead to focus on 2 statistical models (Binary Classification and Linear Regression). Having a BSc in Economics, the Linear Regression tutorials and quizzes seemed infantile, while the Binary Classification tutorials proved to be too vague, when we actually had to apply this knowledge on the final project. In retrospect, I regret not starting to work on the final week's material right from the start, which resulted in having to switch session multiple times in order to finish the course. Even if I had done so, though, it wouldn't have made up for the vague instructions in the quizzes and assignment of the final week that made feel at a loss, until I asked for help in the forums. All in all, this course need some serious re-working, in terms of how the material is presented and how the assignments are phrased.