Going into this course, I was really disappointed that I had to take this course for a Data Science Specialization because at a skin-deep level it seemed very irrelevant, and frankly I was at that state of mind until week 4 of this course.

There are several reasons why I'm rating this course 2 out of 5 stars:

1) The content of the first three weeks were just informational and should have been covered in one or two weeks.

2) Homework assignments were not challenging at all. 90% of the questions were one-liners and required simply calling the methods of networkx that was discussed. This course would benefit by homework assignments that had 1-2 problems that required us to solve real-life problems from scratch, rather than ONLY calling networkx methods.

3) There was no discussion on how to get network data. We were just given all this magical data about how relationship scores between employees and future connections between employees... How am I supposed to get that in real life?? Some problems asking us to make a network would've been valuable.

4) More time should have been spent on prediction and other advanced topics, at least another week to bring the "Applied" into "Applied Social Network Analysis."

5) I really enjoyed the professor's teaching style. He explained concepts well and had great examples during lectures.

This course is a good introduction to graph theory. Its contents are interesting and the lecturer did a great job explaining them. So, what is the problem? The problem is that the course is not called "Applied Graph Analysis in Python" but "Applied Social Network Analysis in Python". This incongruity in the title of the course (intentional or not) will generate erroneous expectations in the students, especially if we consider that they have to take the course to finish the specialization. Regarding the assignments, they are divided into two groups: trivial tasks that are solved with a single line of code extracted from the NetworkX manual and more complex tasks related to Machine Learning that do not involve putting into practice the concepts of this course but those of the third course of the specialization. I regret being so tough, but my impression on this course is that it is filler content designed just to have a five course specialization instead of four.

The lectures are good. However, the assignments are poor: very simple exercises with toy examples, but far away from real applications. Moreover, I spent most of the time (particularly in the last assignment) trying to deal with the autograder.

This is hands down the best taught course in the speciality. The instructor explains concepts in the videos clearly and the assignment questions are structured and interesting. Do note that the assignment in week 4 does pull together the whole specialisation in a real world problem, so if you aren't taking the whole speciality you will need a knowledge of Pandas and SKLearn. Personally I thought it was pitched at just the right level because the ML work is just enough to have to go through the process, without any complicated feature optimisation.

Only wish the other courses worked as well as this one.

This is by far my favorite Coursera course - well organized contents and intuitive example!

Great course, maybe even the best on this great specialization!

it is good but we are looking for more real practices

For a coding heavy course, why doesn't the instructor just upload the code used in slides as a Jupyter Notebook? This would save A LOT OF TIME and frustration. Right now, I have to pause the video to copy the code AND write my own notes and it wastes so much time. Not to mention, you can easily be prone to writing wrong syntax when you're trying to keep up so fast, and then you run the code chunk and it doesn't work and you have to go back to that point in the video. It's a simple staple that I would have expected in a UMich course. Also, they don't show how to create networks from pre-existing data, which is how you will usually work in the real-world

The specialization for Applied Data science started strong, with engaging exercises, good instruction, and good recommendations for additional reading and resources. As the specialization continued, the courses seemed to get "lazy", and the course topics became more abstract and less applied.

After going through this specialization, I would not recommend this to someone if I could find a better program through edX or another coursera offering.

The assignment auto grader was horribly designed.

They need to change the 4th assignment is almost impossible to run on jupyter

So, I passed all modules in the whole specialization and received the certificate. This is by far the best course, and the reason for this is the instructor. Daniel Romero is great at explaining the concepts, expresses himself clearly and uses lots of examples which help immensely. The programming assignments are actually fun to solve - the instructions are clear and well-formulated. I know what is expected and can focus on doing data science. For the first time I didn't have to spend hours reading the Discussion Group posts in despair, in order to figure out how to pass the assignments (tricks, hacks, etc). This can't be said about assignments in other modules. I think the assignments were not too easy - to me the difficulty was just right. It's an introductory course to this matter and the worst you can do is daunt learners with unrealistic assignments (as in Week 4 of Text Mining). I think my appreciation for this course is intensified by the irritation with other courses. But at any rate, great job Daniel.

This is the last course of the Applied Data Sci in Python certificate. It effectively ties together all the introduced concepts from the previous courses (except Natural Language Processing). Daniel Romero was an extremely effective lecturer and many of the concepts and know-how were introduced, taught, and assessed appropriately. I'm also impressed that I was able to learn a new python library I (or my coworkers) had not heard of before.

I learned many interesting new concepts in social network analysis and a bunch of new graph algorithms, which are rarely taught in the "traditional" algorithm course. Now I know how companies like Cambridge Analytics can use the Facebook's social network data to derive useful information. (It's actually quite easy.) A class like this is more important than ever. I just wish we could have more time to explore a few topics more deeply.

This course was very interesting and well taught, finally after all other courses I have managed to complete the assignments for this one in the recommended amount of time. Maybe the questions were structured better than past modules, or maybe my level of understanding of programming in python was at its best. Either way the assignments were very enjoyable, thank you!

Remarkably good explanations, and interesting selection of subtopics. Interestingly , it does not delve into Facebook or any other social media applications, and is still just as valuable as it covers Graphs in some depth. Uses Python and its NetworkX library. Knowledge of classification models and scikit-learn is needed for the 4th assignment.

Coming into this course, I didn't expect much but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the material. The quizzes were especially designed well and the final assignment was really challenging and instructive. I wish there was more of predictive modeling using network features but the rest of the course easily makes up for that.

This is a great course for 2 reasons. The earlier assignments were just difficulty enough to reinforce the lectures. The last assignment was challenging enough to bring the entire specialization to to satisfying close. After finishing assignment 4, I really feel that I can apply the learning from this specialization to real work.

Nice way to end the 5 course specialization. Brought together several machine learning and python skills that I learned in the previous courses. Instructor does a great job introducing new concepts with high level theory and intuitive examples. Course slides were superb and can serve as future reference material.

Excellent Course, very interesting, no idea that so many tools existed for network study and analysis. Excellent job both from the professor Daniel, and from Coursera/University of Michigan State. The QUIZES were very challenging, sometimes more than the Assignments. I'm really satisfied.

As a course by itself or as part of the specialization, either way (it helps to have completed the first two in the set), it is a great course.

It provides a very good high level picture of what is needed in ones toolbox.

Essentials: networkx, matplotlib and to a lesser extent pandas.

This class was an excellent introduction to network analysis, where concepts, metrics and purpose of application where provided in a clear and digestible manners. The instructor made the class very livable with topics that might have been too dry under different circumstances.

Month 5 was very nice. I enjoy networks and appreciate your presentation of the material. I would also like to thank all of those who worked to bring the specialization to life. This includes the lecturers, grad students, and mentors who devoted time to the class.

THANKS!!

Eventhough the tutorial video is also switch to the teacher's face that make me stop the video to see the slide frame.But It's intuitive to understand the basic concept about the network with some exercise to enforce the knowledge. The final exercise is more intersting...

I learnt about networkx and its capabilities. The course introduces to many network algorithms and talks about concepts of centrality, page rank, etc. Good eye opener to all these concepts. The last assignment is very practical and challenging. Enjoyed the course.

Praveen