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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Behavioral Finance by Duke University

4.4
stars
4,162 ratings

About the Course

We make thousands of decisions every day. Do I cross the road now, or wait for the oncoming truck to pass? Should I eat fries or a salad for lunch? How much should I tip the cab driver? We usually make these decisions with almost no thought, using what psychologists call “heuristics” – rules of thumb that enable us to navigate our lives. Without these mental shortcuts, we would be paralyzed by the multitude of daily choices. But in certain circumstances, these shortcuts lead to predictable errors – predictable, that is, if we know what to watch out for. Did you know, for example, that we are naturally biased towards selling investments that are doing well for us, but holding on to those that are doing poorly? Or that we often select sub-optimal insurance payment plans, and routinely purchase insurance that we don’t even need? And why do so many of us fail to enroll in our employer’s corporate retirement plans, even when the employer offers to match our contributions? Behavioral finance is the study of these and dozens of other financial decision-making errors that can be avoided, if we are familiar with the biases that cause them. In this course, we examine these predictable errors, and discover where we are most susceptible to them. This course is intended to guide participants towards better financial choices. Learn how to improve your spending, saving, and investing decisions for the future....

Top reviews

AM

Aug 15, 2017

Great course! It allows to understand the twisted logic that run in our heads. Helps to establish the balance between probabilistic truth and illusions that infect our decision-making. Thanks a lot!

SK

Feb 25, 2020

Good course! There is just one thing I would improve here - an explanation of the mistakes after the tests are done. This improvement should increase the student`s understanding of specific topics.

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1 - 25 of 1,043 Reviews for Behavioral Finance

By Dane C

Aug 29, 2016

Duke.... Coursera... guys, come on! I'd like to contrast this with the Wharton Business Analytics specialization that I'm completing. It was like night and day. I mean, professors in that course are presenting their own research! Cade Massey presents research he did with Dick Thaler! None of that happens here. The information shared doesn't even flow smoothly.

This course relies mainly on PDF slides (if I wanted to read, I would've bought a book). At one point, it even links to 6 articles on another website (and that's in the quiz as well). It seems like very little effort was put into this online class by the professors. The slides themselves seemed scatter-brained, several times asking questions that are never even answered. It was almost as if someone took already prepared slides from a course and just kind of mashed them with a very little bit of video to make an "online" course. Even the answers to quizzes seemed extremely vague (it often felt like there were several right answers... or none -- to me, this is sloppy quiz writing).

I honestly expected better from both Coursera and Duke! The only redeeming part about this course is that behavioral economics is honestly compelling, despite the shortcomings pointed out.

By Cooper O

Jun 19, 2017

An interesting course with interesting lecture material, but lots of additional reading is required to properly understand the various biases. Furthermore, the examples in the quizzes are so vague that it is very difficult to associate them with particular biases or be sure that particular biases do not apply.

By Philipp B

Aug 14, 2016

The course covers the basic foundations of behavioral finance, especially prospect theory and various cognitive biases that negatively influence our decision making in financial affairs.

The topics covered are definitely very interesting and the lecturers frequently prove that they know what they are talking about and explain some topics in adequate depth and breadth.

For a valuable Coursera course I am expecting that most of the material is covered with video lectures (otherwise I read a book on that matter) and I am expecting thought-through slides with clear definitions, clear practical examples and exercises, and the presentation of experimental proofs for the given statements.

Regrettably, most of this course is comprised of simple slides with limited structuring, as definitions, exercises, and proofs are often intermingled. More importantly, only a very limited subset of the course is covered with the suitable and valuable video lectures.

Especially the last of the three-week course consist mostly of reading material from an external website.

The exercises after each of the three weeks are at the lower end of what I have seen on Coursera and the lecturers should consider putting more effort in creating useful questions for formative and summative evaluations of the learning progress.

In summary, smart lecturers present a very interesting and highly relevant topic, but they put to little effort in creating a compellingly online course.

By Gaurav S

May 14, 2017

This course touches upon important concepts very briefly and a lot of content is vague and not didactic. Some of the terminology used is not consistent with that used in the standard textbooks possibly to handicap students from cross referencing, though this practice is not uncommon in many top notch Business Schools' curriculum. This course seems more like an advertisement for the university than a true effort towards educating the masses. Moreover, the quizzes predominantly ask "what is this called" rather than "how does this work". The content could have been better.

By Ana A V M d F

May 3, 2017

While the topic is interesting, the materials are poor and the lectures are not particularly insightful. The slides have several mistakes and typos, which makes you doubt the whole course. The speakers are not engaging and it just looks like no effort was made in preparing this course. Additionally, the materials do not prepare you for the review, and on weeks 2 and 3 (the hardest) you don't have a chance to review the questions or correct your mistakes. The course really needs some improving!

By Severyn K

Feb 26, 2020

Good course! There is just one thing I would improve here - an explanation of the mistakes after the tests are done. This improvement should increase the student`s understanding of specific topics.

By mayukh m

May 17, 2020

One of the most vaguely organised course ever taken in coursera. The slides and lecture are full of interesting titbits, but that's just it. The quizzes are counter-intuitive and do not correlate to any study material provided. Such courses make it quite discouraging for new comers and get them fill with hate about the subject. Following are my sincere recommendations:

i) Quizzes should have proper explanation to why the options are correct, as we have no or extremely vague pointers.

ii) The course is NOT exhaustive and lot of external reading is required to just pass the quiz through multiple attempts in a purely hit and trial fashion.

iii) On the very onset the instructions must be clear about the applied nature of the quiz and its possible lack of explanation.

By Yuki M

Apr 8, 2018

Good topic without contents. Videos are simply too short and they just give you PDFs and tell you to "just read it". Then you are required to take the tests with lots of application with the behavioural concepts, with minimal input. The highlight is that they just put links to third part pages that explain past bubble cases. How dare you be so lazy? This was the worst course I encountered on Coursera for sure.

By Can H

Aug 8, 2016

The video lectures are not adequate, too much self-study effort is needed to have a good understanding of the subject. The time allocated for this topic is not enough.

By Yuze Y

Dec 28, 2016

Not enough materials in the video. Most of the info are in the reading.

By Maarten v D

Aug 21, 2017

Insightfull short course on psychological background on investing. Recommend this course for any investment professional or amateur to learn about the most common pitfalls in investing

By Szabolcs T

Nov 24, 2017

I believe many of the concepts in the quizzes were not covered in sufficient details neither in the videos nor in the supplementary materials. Overall there was not enough material provided on the subject.

By Hilde K

Aug 12, 2016

This course had almost no lectures. It was almost all done in downloadable PDF's that were rarely discussed in the lectures. I never learned why anything happened.

By Jiaxing L

Sep 20, 2016

Basically not much content. The guest speaker uses unnecessarily weird examples in his talk.

By Jason N

Oct 21, 2020

This is not a course for beginners nor will it take the short amount of time advertised. You will need to do the extra reading so be ready. The course starts basic but quickly progresses. I am a middle-aged executive of a wealth management firm. Behavioral Science is a hobby for me. I will tell you to read books and listen to podcasts first. I think this was a half-assed effort on behalf of the professors and terrible management and marketing job by Coursera. In the third quiz, the professors clearly gave up on teaching. On all quizzes, their egos were very apparent to show how much they knew and not teach us, students. The job of teachers is to teach and then test absorption. You will find terms in here not taught. So you will need to read on your own. The examples are so basic that when you get to quizzes, additional reading is necessary to understand how topics and concepts apply in the real world. Quiz questions are also subjective enough that there are other right answers, but they want you to pick the best answer through their perspective. I have a ton of respect for teachers and appreciate good ones. I believe the professors of this course are good teachers. It does not show here. It seems as though they tried to make a course suitable for Coursera and they missed the mark. There is a big gap between what they teach and what they test your absorption.

By Daniel Š

Oct 16, 2018

I expected much more from Duke - home of Dan Ariely. The study materials are like notes from lectures. Vidoes are not more than just repetitions of notes.

By Martin Š

May 3, 2018

This course was a very good sum up of Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. Definitely recommend to everyone who would like to know more about our flaws or would like to refresh your knowledge.

By Chris-Anna L

Nov 12, 2020

What a mess. I am very interested in this subject area and was completely put off by the structure of this class. The quizzes were largely unrelated or very loosely related to the slides and videos. There was no explanation to understand the questions and the correct answers once a quiz was completed. I am surprised this course is being offered in this way.

By NISHANT K

Oct 31, 2020

Highly unorganized course

By Tiago F A M

Mar 22, 2018

Very interesting course and content! As a graduate in Economy and Master in Finance it was very interesting to see the other side that normally economists don't see. It was really interesting and marking knowing it exists the Prospect theory that is more precise explaining humar behaviour, that I've never heard about in my academic education. Also, seeing what is behind every market bubble or crash, helps giving new light to understand such events.

By Nicki H

Jan 8, 2021

I found this course to be so insightful and I loved learning about the various biases and behaviors common to many of them. I loved the quiz challenges. A great investment of my time.

By Tom F

Mar 11, 2018

The course is great but the last two exams are poorly structured: the point is to not simply pass the exam, but to be able to learn from my mistakes. It was pretty straightforward to accomplish the feedback I sought with the explanations offered on the first test, but the second and third tests were practically impenetrable. Further, navigating back and forth is ridiculously difficult: only the results for week one are the default; the others require much effort. I still haven't been able to review or redo the second test, nor have I been able to find the course material for week 2. I enjoyed the course, and the instructors were first rate, but there's some serious infrastructural improvements need to make your roadways way more passable. Thank you, and I hope Duke takes my comments seriously: if you're reaching out to the world, it's best to put on one's Sunday best.

By Simon C

Nov 18, 2020

Material was good, but the quizzes are poor because many questions are inadequately covered in the class materials.

By Rowena S

Nov 29, 2020

I have done quite a lot of courses on Coursera but I found the format of this one disappointing: I read the materials given prior to the lectures, but found that these short videos simply repeated the contents of the reading materials without going into further depth, offering alternate examples (the same ones were cited as the reading texts) or extending the concepts. The quizzes (particularly the last one) referred to some biases which weren't even mentioned in the reading materials or lectures. I felt like the quizzes were testing only my ability to recognise different biases and remember the names, quite a superficial approach to behavioural finance.

By Anneth M R

May 7, 2017

"Rationality is an assumption in economics, not a demonstrated fact" I loved this course and all the content. It was kind of hard to understand since i don't have the basic knowledge about economics.