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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Machine Learning: Regression by University of Washington

4.8
stars
5,538 ratings

About the Course

Case Study - Predicting Housing Prices In our first case study, predicting house prices, you will create models that predict a continuous value (price) from input features (square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms,...). This is just one of the many places where regression can be applied. Other applications range from predicting health outcomes in medicine, stock prices in finance, and power usage in high-performance computing, to analyzing which regulators are important for gene expression. In this course, you will explore regularized linear regression models for the task of prediction and feature selection. You will be able to handle very large sets of features and select between models of various complexity. You will also analyze the impact of aspects of your data -- such as outliers -- on your selected models and predictions. To fit these models, you will implement optimization algorithms that scale to large datasets. Learning Outcomes: By the end of this course, you will be able to: -Describe the input and output of a regression model. -Compare and contrast bias and variance when modeling data. -Estimate model parameters using optimization algorithms. -Tune parameters with cross validation. -Analyze the performance of the model. -Describe the notion of sparsity and how LASSO leads to sparse solutions. -Deploy methods to select between models. -Exploit the model to form predictions. -Build a regression model to predict prices using a housing dataset. -Implement these techniques in Python....

Top reviews

KM

May 4, 2020

Excellent professor. Fundamentals and math are provided as well. Very good notebooks for the assignments...it’s just that turicreate library that caused some issues, however the course deserves a 5/5

PD

Mar 16, 2016

I really enjoyed all the concepts and implementations I did along this course....except during the Lasso module. I found this module harder than the others but very interesting as well. Great course!

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801 - 825 of 993 Reviews for Machine Learning: Regression

By Anunathan G S

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Aug 28, 2018

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By IDOWU H A

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May 20, 2018

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By Ruchi S

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Nov 8, 2017

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By Alessandro B

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Sep 27, 2017

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By Navinkumar

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Feb 17, 2017

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By Duy V N

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Feb 16, 2016

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By Miguel P

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Dec 2, 2015

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By manuel S

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Aug 13, 2017

Interesting course. However, I have some mixed feelings:

I have a BS in mathematics, in Mexico (a "licenciatura", which is just between "BS" and "MS")

So, I'd say I have pretty good knowledge of statistics. So, now it is "training" instead of "fitting". It's "overfitting" instead of "multi colinearity". There are some algorithms to remove/add features (Ridge/Lasso), which -as noted- induce bias in the parameters. However, more "formal" methods susch as stepwise regression and bayesian sequences, are completely ignored.

That'd be fine except for the fact that there not even the slightest attempt to approach statistic significant, neither for the model nor for the individual parameters.

Some other methods (moving averages, Henderson MA, Mahalanobis distances) should also be covered.

So, in summary, an interesting course in the sense that ti gives an idea as to where lies the state of the art, but a little bit disappointing in the sense that -except for some new labels for the same tricks, and a humongous computing power- there is still nothing new under the sun. Still, worth the time invested

By Grant V

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Feb 29, 2016

An excellent and quite extensive foray into regression analyses from single-variable linear regression to nearest-neighbor and kernel regression techniques, including how to use gradient vs. coordinate descent for optimization and proper L1 and L2 regularization methods. The lecture slides have some questionable pedagogical and aesthetic qualities, and they could use some more polish from someone who specializes in teaching presentation methods, but the meat of the course comes from its quizzes and programming assignments, which are well split between practical use (via Graphlab Create and SFrame) and a nuts-and-bolts assignment that have you implement these methods from scratch. An extremely valuable course for someone who wants to use these for a data science application but also wants to understand the mathematics and statistics behind them to an appreciable degree.

By William K

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Aug 23, 2017

The only complaint I have is that the programming exercises were not challenging enough. The lecture videos were great to build up an understanding from fundamentals, but the assignments did not fully test the concepts. There were too many exercises that were fill-in-the-blank with most of the code already written. I would appreciate more rigorous programming exercises to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the topics. Moreover, the programming exercises were not applicable to real-world applications because all the data was already neatly presented and the desired outcome was known ahead of time. In order to mimic real-world machine learning problems, we should be required to clean the data and answer open-ended questions that require exploring and understanding the data before developing machine learning models to extract usable information.

By Denys G

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Jan 14, 2016

Courses like this are always difficult to judge because of the great variety of students coursera reaches. That is, some class members finished this course in the first week it was open, others still struggled till the last minute. For some the math was too simply, for others the python programming was too confusing. All in all it strikes a reasonable balance between novice learners and more advanced students.

What the course could stand to really benefit from is some kind of repository of code, for those students who successfully completed the assignments to compare to their own. It seems pretty clear that there are some advanced python users whose insights could help improve one's coding skills.

By Marvin J A

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Nov 27, 2015

(Beta-Test review)

Status: Still on the first week.

The content is an easy follow, though it might seem to be a slight difficulty for those without a heavy background in calculus. So far, all the links (to the downloadable csv's and ipynb files) work well. All the videos have no apparent bugs and/or problems. I would also suggest to have the slides available for download as in the previous module.

I don't think writing over the animation is a bad thing as long as it's still understandable.

As an aside, I suggest editing out the swallowing sound you might occasionally hear whenever either instructor is speaking. To some, it seems a bit off-putting.

Great course, overall.

Thanks,

Marvin

By Martin B

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Apr 11, 2019

Excellent explanation of the use of regression-based Machine Learning techniques. I recommend taking the specialization on Machine Learning Mathematics before taking this one - it will give you a deeper understanding of some of the mathematical concepts involved and make for a greater experience with this course. Programming assignments are good and help the learner with applying and re-visiting the material. Big drawback is the insistence in most of the assignments on using Python 2 and Graphlab Create. Workarounds for users of Pandas, Scikit-Learn, NLTK etc. are provided but it could be better.

By James K

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Nov 12, 2016

This course covered a lot of material on linear regression. Be prepared for plenty of math (mostly algebra, a small amount of calculus). You should also be prepared to write a small-ish, if focused, amount of Python. The time commitment was higher than expected. I spent between 1-2 hours on lecture, and each programming assignment was between 2-3 hours, but overall the course is well worth the time investment. The instructors (Emily in particular for this course) are excellent, and present the lectures in an easy to follow format. I'm looking forward to the next course in the specialization.

By Marko B

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Mar 4, 2017

In most cases offers great mathematical and logical clarity of the machine learning models. The professor does not dumb-down the concepts, but also tries hard to go through all the steps so that you understand them.

I am taking a point down for

- those few moments when it was not 100% clear, where I feel things were left out

- the practical side, there could have been more practical explanations, tips and tricks, and even more datasets than just the one house dataset that was used in each assignment

- for the usage of Graphlab Create which is not the industry standard and is not open source

By Michael C

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Feb 28, 2016

The video lectures are particularly clear and with a good balance between intuition and details.

The assignments are interesting and they require some time even if they are not the most challenging.

Nice the choice to use Graphlab but to give detailed instructions also for Pandas and leaving the possibility open to use different software.

I will certainly take the following ones.

If you are not interested in the the full specialization and already have some exposure to python notebooks, it is possible to follow this course without the previous one.

By Jesus B P

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Mar 3, 2020

The content of the course is great and very well explained. The only issue I had was with how it uses Turi Create vs scikit. The course is prepared to be used with Turicreate which is basically Apple dependant, I didn't manage to get it working on Windows computer. They offer more information using scikit, but in the first two lessons this is not evident, and then there is a bit of confusion on how to do part of the quizes using scikit, so I had to expend quite a lot of time to figure things out and looking for external support on the tools.

By hrushikesh m

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Aug 27, 2020

It was a great experience while having this course I learned a lot of innovative modules. The course was swift was not too rapid and steady I would definitely recommend this course for the aspirant who is looking for a head start in the machine learning career. I might have a suggestion for the mentors that the course python notebook is not up to date and tools used to explain in the videos varies with the python the notebook this causes chaos in the user's mind and the user might get disturbed or distracted

By Sean T

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Jan 19, 2018

Nice introduction to some core concepts and modelling techniques, enjoyed the coding exercises.

I performed exercises using pandas, lumpy, sk-learn and python 2.7 no problem. I use python 3.5 but downgraded in case it was going to cause me problems down the line, I don't think it would have now that i have completed it.

I also used the proprietary graphlab for fun in some exercises or in parallel with sklearn+pandas, is a nice library but the fact you have to register for academic license ruled it out for me.

By Christy C

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Oct 15, 2016

Excellent course. If you want to learn the mathematical intuitions behind Lasso, Ridge and general ML concepts, this course breaks them down into details. This is the only course I've found on the many MOOC sites out there that goes into this much depth. One downside is that Coursera lacks support in general, but I do not consider it downside of this course but Coursera's. In terms of frameworks, many people like me have completed the course using Numpy and Scikit-learn instead of Dato, so it is doable!

By Yury N

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Jun 9, 2016

Really good course. Provides basic theoretical and hands on knowledge in the regression.

Step by step programming quiz some times not demonstrate enough best practices or conceptual ideas. For example I would expect that if at step 1 we asked to assess performance based on single feature then at step 2 based on several features and compare results. But in most of the cases such comparison not proposed and results not explained. In addition it is not always clear why prediction accuracy better or worse.

By Manuel T F

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May 28, 2017

Great course! To be very honest it was a challenge and you made me learn a lot. Wait a second, that was the goal, right?

A couple of times I couldn't know why my answers in the quizzes were wrong. Besides, in general I found the level of the programming asignments quite fine.

Things you are doing right:

+ Tests in the programming assignments to ensure we are coding correctly

+ Constructive approach

Things you can improve:

- I can't think of something right now, so I guess it is indeed a great course!

By Charles G

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Feb 8, 2016

Great course! Good balance of theory and practical application. I'm glad that we didn't use GraphLab as much as in the first course and more exercises were implementing the algorithms.

My one recommendation for improvement would be to revise some of the assignments with an eye for making the instructions more clear. There were a few--particularly week 5--where I understood the concepts, but it was very unclear what exactly we were being asked to do.

Looking forward to the next course!

By Siamak S

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Jan 25, 2016

This course touches on basic concepts quite nicely and should help students with adequate math background to gain a good understanding of regression on both high and low level.

A text book and optional exercises could help attain better theoretical ground for regression. In general, references and suggested reading are missing from this specialization.

I would also like to see optional programming assignments on publicly available data sets other than the repeatedly used house prices data.

By Leo B

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Apr 26, 2017

The material in this course is very interesting. I feel comfortable with the concepts and algorithms. I am definitely prepared to utilize these skills in an entry-level manner - it will take some hands-on practice with real datasets to build expertise, understand the nuances of these approaches and expand my knowledge base. I recommend a decent level of comfort with programming. I completed the Python for Everybody specialization, but still struggled with the programming in this course.