Learner Reviews & Feedback for Financial Engineering and Risk Management Part I by Columbia University

The course provides a very thorough introduction on the basic models and mechanisms by which various financial products are priced. One issue I had, was that the quiz questions sometimes used terminology or jargon for which the link with the material covered in the videos was not always immediately obvious. Also, the course, especially the later modules, heavily relies on Microsoft Excel, which some people might not be willing to pay hard cash for. It is possible to pass by doing the assignments with e.g. Python, but it's a lot of work, and not for the faint of heart.

The course is very elementary and basic. It should be a good intro 101 for those who have never studied mathematical finance. You can also practice using Excel if you have never used it before. It could be more challenging and fun if there were more modeling questions.

please help with questions given as test for better clearity.

Unfortunately, no tutors/instructors present to supervise the course, which made inconsistencies between course material (slides, videos) and solutions calculated for assignments horribly annoying to deal with, especially for someone like me new to the topic. Further, the solver addin (needed for the week 6 assignment) is not consistent across different excel versions and libre calc, which resulted in a whole lot of guesswork to pass this assignment. I'm sorry to say the course never came close to my expectations, despite the very interesting topic. Would not recommend.

The explanations are not clear and only a few exercises presented in the quiz were covered in the course videos. There is no exercise book to prepare for the exercise of the quiz.

No help was granted during the practice of the course. I din't find the course helpful for future growth in a company as company doesn't consider it to be as professional.

It is a little sad that the materials taught were not matching test materials well in the quiz.

This course is conducted mostly more or less by reading just the slides.

Not at all what I expected--big disappointment

I have an engineering / numerics background and enjoyed this course very much. Good overview and comprehensive explanation of mathematical models of fixed income and equities as well as derivatives.

The content of this course is apropiate for drive the finances and risk, We be lear more about this course

I am Engenier in Sofware, the know of finances is aplicable in anyware software.

The course is the clearest and most informative content on FRM I have come across. Thank you University of Columbia for this opportunity

Good introduction to term structure modeling, arbitrage and other similar topics, quizes were challenging and required independent thought. Good course overall, the lack of guidance on incorrect quiz questions except for through the forum is the only reason for a loss of star.

Good course for a dry subject. I feel that the modeling could've been more thoroughly explain. For example, the professor could've used cases to analyze/explain what relationships between variables signify in greater detail.

Some unnecessarily introduced math formula hamper the understanding of the subject itself. Lack of simple, straightforward definition of finance terms.

Lots of practical exercises with not enough explanations on the underlying reasoning/theory.

Some of the knowledge points lack good examples to support and prove.

The only reason i passed was because i ignored the lectures and asked others for help, once i did that finance became a lot easier to understand.

This course is a great, from the perspective of how it is organized as well as the assignments provided at the end of each module. The way the content layout is well-suited and leads student step by step gaining insight to the mechanics of different financial derivatives and working on those assignments is a great method of pushing student spend time to understand how the mechanics works.

Both instructors are great! and I appreciated greatly their effort as well as Coursera.

The only one improvement I would suggest is that if a TA can be assigned for this course, it'll be a great help to all students.

Thanks!

Perfect course to grasp the fundamental theories in financial engineering and risk management! I deeply appreciate the videos and lecture notes! Hopefully, I can start the next course soon :)

The material is clear stated, the volume and the deepness of the course is substantial, the supplements are very helpful. The spreadsheets can even use as basis for practice modelling.

Great course. However to get the highest score in the assignments you are sometimes required to understand concepts not explained in the videos or slides.

A very interested course. Only suggestion:

a. if possibile more interation with the professors

b. being more realistic in the case studies

There are many assumptions made regarding the candidates capability in understanding the concepts. Now being from finance background I knew very well what was happening. But after a certain point in the course they begin to introduce very complex material and try to fit the explanation in a few minutes which I personally don't think is possible to understand. The worst part is when the questions asked in the quiz are extremely complex and require a very good and deep understanding of what's going on but the lectures had very little to nothing to explain similar type of questions so as for candidates to understand and apply a similar logic in solving those questions. I did use google to get more information and deep explanations of the concept to get a better grasp. The quizzes are really difficult and the lectures don't really help that much. But its a very informative course and definitely gives you a great advantage if you understand things well.

The course is OK. You can learn the material if you work hard to find external sources to help.

A few problems with the course... First, the people speaking in the lectures seem to be speed reading off of a piece of paper, trying to make every video below a certain time threshold. It feels less like teaching, and more like listening to someone read. Second, the handwriting is pretty bad throughout, sometimes illegible. Third, the course significantly lacks example problems along with solutions (showing work) to those problems. Lastly, this course lacks practicality. It would be nice to understand more about uses (expand on calibration of binomial options models, for example).

I have coded some examples for those looking for an extra place to learn the algorithms/math associated with some of the important points of this course: https://github.com/amittleider/FinancialEngineering .