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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Mathematical Thinking in Computer Science by University of California San Diego

4.4
stars
2,243 ratings

About the Course

Mathematical thinking is crucial in all areas of computer science: algorithms, bioinformatics, computer graphics, data science, machine learning, etc. In this course, we will learn the most important tools used in discrete mathematics: induction, recursion, logic, invariants, examples, optimality. We will use these tools to answer typical programming questions like: How can we be certain a solution exists? Am I sure my program computes the optimal answer? Do each of these objects meet the given requirements? In the online course, we use a try-this-before-we-explain-everything approach: you will be solving many interactive (and mobile friendly) puzzles that were carefully designed to allow you to invent many of the important ideas and concepts yourself. Prerequisites: 1. We assume only basic math (e.g., we expect you to know what is a square or how to add fractions), common sense and curiosity. 2. Basic programming knowledge is necessary as some quizzes require programming in Python....

Top reviews

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Mar 25, 2019

The teachers are informative and good. They explain the topic in a way that we can easily understand. The slides provide all the information that is needed. The external tools are fun and informative.

AM

Feb 27, 2021

It is a great course! teachers explain everything with care. While providing lectures there are some popup ques that verify whether you understood that lecture or not. Overall, a great experience.

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451 - 475 of 515 Reviews for Mathematical Thinking in Computer Science

By Akash V S

May 18, 2020

The course was engaging and comprehensive yet a lot of the topics mentioned, especially in the last week, were not explained at all - for example, Big O Notation and time complexity. Moreover, there was an immense disparity between the difficulty in the problems that were to be solved as coursework and the bonus track.

By Dave K

Mar 6, 2022

Interesting ideas. Not always well explained. My biggest question, though, is what exactly did I learn? A bunch of abstract mathematical concepts without anything really tying them togeher. I get how it's discrete mathematics, but that's because I know discrete math outside of this course.

By Animesh S

Jun 23, 2020

It's hard to cope up with someone who didn't study math in the past. Course content is not sufficient according to the problem sets. I had to look for references to the video and then would understand everything completely. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend it for a non-math person

By Aditya D

Jun 14, 2020

The course material is great! Also the way the course was planned is commendable. The course instructors especially Prof Alexander Shen are hard to understand most of the times when they explain a certain concept. The explanations by instructors need to improve.

By Mohamed A J

Dec 7, 2018

It's a very stimulating course, though not caring for students much. The material sometimes should elaborate more on concepts, say in week 6, it should've been clearer to student what are permutations in a clearer sense.

By Omar G

Jul 27, 2020

The course material is great but they should improve the explanations and practice what they go to say before film the lessons. Making too many mistakes while explaining math concepts ends up confusing the students.

By Naveen R

Jul 28, 2020

It certainly was an intriguing course, and there were good puzzles which I have liked. However, I felt a little disappointed because the class ended so abruptly, and I am not sure how much new math I have learned.

By Filip C

May 26, 2020

Очень уважаю Александра Шень, учился по его учебнику, очень нравится его манера преподносить материал. Однако очень разочаровали остальные лекторы. (Уровень английского, материал и манера преподавания)

By Sumit A

Jun 4, 2018

The lectures were really good, however explanation of more exercises would be a bit helpful as the videos are fairly short, I had problem understanding some of them due to limited number of examples.

By SaLLaK L

Jun 2, 2022

the strategy of "try first" is great tool and is a must in my opinion to learn math, I hope Coursera improve more the quality of the lectures, add more exercises , Overall thank you so much

By yk

Mar 25, 2020

The material was interesting however the instructor Alexander Chen was incomprehensible. He was unable to verbalize a thought or explanation without sounding nonsensical.

By Novak D

Mar 30, 2020

I wish it went a bit more in-depth. I also wish there were more examples to practice. Overall, however, it was a good course, I have learned a lot.

By Yu T

Sep 9, 2023

There are no videos from Week 4. Most quizzes are given before explanations. So I solved many quizzes without knowing the intent of the questions.

By Ali S

Oct 18, 2022

totally it was a good and beneficial course but the heavy foreign accents of lectureres made it a little difficult to follow the lectures.

By Nitish

Apr 20, 2020

It's really very interesting course. I hope you all enjoy this course.

logical and interesting subject.

By Neeraj G

Feb 10, 2020

The course was very basic for me when I compared the material with the book of Discrete Mathematics

By shashwat p

Sep 4, 2020

Last week was a bit confusing because the concept of permutation and cycles are mixed I guess.

By Ambarish B

Aug 24, 2019

The lectures aren't good and the assignments are not well explained as to what we need to do.

By Erickson N R I

Oct 25, 2020

I didn't really get the lessons. The instructors weren't confident in teaching their topics.

By Hea R W

Sep 17, 2019

The quiz were all very interesting, but sometimes it was hard to understand the lecturers...

By Aaliyah J

Jul 13, 2023

the honors selection

is buggy but you can still complete

the course with honors, sadly.

By Trần C L

Oct 19, 2019

Good course with many interesting quizzes although it is lacking of clear explanation

By Rafael F

Oct 18, 2024

Shallow content, I was expecting more reading and depth in most of the concepts

By Margarida B

Apr 23, 2020

Last 3 weeks were not engaging at all, the first 3 were amazing (my opinion)

By Ghali L H

Sep 9, 2020

Explanations of Puzzles are not always clear.

Week 6 is very complex.