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Learner Reviews & Feedback for What is Data Science? by IBM

4.7
stars
67,936 ratings

About the Course

Do you want to know why data science has been labeled the sexiest profession of the 21st century? After taking this course, you will be able to answer this question, understand what data science is and what data scientists do, and learn about career paths in the field. The art of uncovering insights and trends in data has been around since ancient times. The ancient Egyptians used census data to increase efficiency in tax collection and accurately predicted the Nile River's flooding every year. Since then, people have continued to use data to derive insights and predict outcomes. Recently, they have carved out a unique and distinct field for the work they do. This field is data science. In today's world, we use Data Science to find patterns in data and make meaningful, data-driven conclusions and predictions. This course is for everyone and teaches concepts like how data scientists use machine learning and deep learning and how companies apply data science in business. You will meet several data scientists, who will share their insights and experiences in data science. By taking this introductory course, you will begin your journey into this thriving field....

Top reviews

SB

Sep 9, 2019

Very learning experience, I am a beginner in DS, but the instructors in this course simplified the contents that made me I could easily understand, tools and materials were very helpful to start with.

MS

Sep 17, 2020

very useful. i liked and enjoyed the journey of learning in these five weeks. the instructor is very clear and taught very interestingly. Thanks to her. she looked poised and cheerful and professional

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76 - 100 of 10,000 Reviews for What is Data Science?

By Anna R

•

Feb 17, 2021

Broad review of the definition of data science. Can easily get the same information from a quick Google search. Week 3 was the most useful.

By Roger A

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Jul 26, 2020

Many interviews, nice chats, but not so much content. I was expecting some more theory/practice, not so much documentary.

By Ross E

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Mar 25, 2020

Most of the transcripts of the videos were from old or different versions of the videoes. This fails the basic principle one of the core of the five Vs: Veracity. None done.

There were countless errors in the IBM voiced-over, animation videos. For example saying that data mining is "automated" when it was just explained that data priming - which is often highly manual at the outset - is an important part of the first steps of data mining. It is absolutely NOT inherently an automated process from end to end.

The final "capstone" assignment which was essentially regurgitation was graded incorrectly. Especially with respect to the final reading. Students were asked to list the "main" sections of what should constitute a report to be given to stakeholders following data science based research. Firstly, dictating sections is stupid as you need to customise to your audience and NO, doing it that way should never be prescribed as universal. Secondly, even adhering strictly to what the reading said and ONLY what the reading said, the grading criteria was WRONG. How on earth did you list Appendices, CLEARLY stated as OPTIONAL as one of the 10 main sections? Not only that, you listed sub-sections as whole sections. For students that got the answer correct, I graded them as such and commented that I'm doing this because the criteria was in fact erroneous.

It's one MOOC. How hard is it to get the basics right? What happened to the IBM culture that used to make software engineers write all their code without a compiler to MAKE SURE what they were building was as correct as possible before compiling because of a focus on quality?

Amateur hour over here. Not inspiring.

By SHANNON L H

•

Sep 12, 2019

Was pretty upset that the answers on the final assignment were incorrect according to the course materials. I am an OCD person that is very by the book, who studies and seeks my answers directly from the materials. I am hear to learn and depend on you to have accurate learning materials and tests that follow the course materials.

I create procedure manuals for staff. One of the first things I do when I finish a new manual, is go through each thing, step by step, to make sure it is accurate. My manuals are for a handful of people, your learning materials are for thousands of people, many of which have language barriers, as English is not their first language. So this makes it even more important for your assignments/tests to be extremely clear in their questions and the answers correct according to the course material. When you have a tremendous amount of complaints about this on the discussion forums and no one of power is doing anything to correct this, this is a major issue.

I had started a specialization with Coursera a few months before and quit near the end of course two due to extreme frustration with these same issues. I love the idea of these specializations, and would love to take many of them. I hope and pray that the rest of this course will be a vast improvement over the last assignment in Course 1 week 3.

By Krishna B

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May 5, 2020

Honestly, I just expected too much from this course. It ended before I could even fully realise it had begun. Grading seemed to be less along the lines of "We want you to understand this" and more along the lines of "We want you to memorise a specific quote from a puzzlingly long video that you won't feel like watching throughout, and will follow up with a reading which is more or less a transcript of the video."

Take up the course if you've never come across the terms "data science" in your life. Otherwise, it's just time and cognitive effort down the drain. This course is basically clickbait that claims to need 3 weeks of your time, but can be completed in a single hour if you're a fast reader and have a long lunch break at work.

By Greice F

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May 15, 2019

- Texts have poor quality so they are hard to read and the references are not available.

- No extra materials are available.

- The quiz are pointless: you can answer without understand the text or the videos. You just need to find the key words on the text, no need to comprehend it.

- The videos are very boring. They are sometimes contradictory. Some questions are not answered and others are answered over and over again.

Finally, I thought the course poorly structured, boring and with low quality material. I could find better material on the internet for free.

By Tiago F V C L

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Jun 20, 2019

The course itself is too general; you complete the course and it's hard to say you actually learned something new. The exercises are extremely easy, you could easily skip all the videos, open the text for each assignment and answer. Furthermore, the testemonials appear to be randomly picked students who say what they think they're supposed to say, or just give their own opinion; this contributes very little to the viewer's actual learning. An introductory video to data science would've had the same outcome as this entire course.

By Renan M d C

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Feb 27, 2020

The course has a very basic approach. It's much more basic than I have imagined and to be honest it is not worth paying for. Everything taught here could be learnt on youtube in 1 or 2 hours. I was expecting basic exercises using data science tools, I mean, the same approach used by academic books: first you learn some concepts and then you make some exercises, then you proceed to the next topic. I'm not saying that what was presented was not good, it was great. But it could have been much deeper.

By Tim R

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Feb 21, 2021

The course was very generic and high level. I learned a few things, but the information is generally only useful to someone who is coming into the topic of Data Science with zero knowledge. Rather than having this course as part of the specialization, it would make more sense as a recommended prerequisite for those looking for a general overview of data science. Quizzes felt like busy-work, testing arbitrary facts from the reading in many cases.

By Priya A M

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Jan 6, 2020

It would have been more time-effective for me to read the Wikipedia page on data science than spend the time watching these videos. The videos are much too basic with absolutely nothing technical and a fair amount of repetition of the themes across all weeks, for example, needing to be a good storyteller. The entire three module course could have easily been condensed to one module and something more substantial could have been added instead.

By Kenneth I

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May 28, 2020

Mostly awful. The majority of the videos are just college professors talking about "curiosity, and passion for data analytics" No concrete examples, just a lot of fluff. Actual verbatim: "A data scientist does data science" The quizzes are a joke. This honestly felt like a waste of time. I'm no closer to learning the "hard skills" necessary to become a data scientist than at the beginning of the course.

By Sima S K

•

Nov 27, 2019

I wouldn't spend much time on this course. Although it is informative, it is filled with marketing for IBM and lengthy and sometimes repetitive interviews with people who work in this field. I'd rather skip these and jump to the real learning, software and analytics skills. Most people who are taking these courses already know this stuff and plus all this information is available for free online.

By Konstantinos K

•

Mar 27, 2021

Extremely basic and introductory course that does not really give very much valuable information.

Also, the peer graded assignment format is not suited (is not optimal) in my humble opinion for self-paced courses, as i do not want to have to wait for another person to review my work in order to receive the certificate... Just take a look at the discussion threads...

By Oedhel S

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Apr 14, 2019

Very thorough for anyone who is interested, but doesn't know what data science is. However, it is mind-numbingly basic and most of the reading is more theoretical application than instruction. Way too long of a course for how little information there was. The quizzes were frustrating, as well, as they simple referred to the reading, but didn't reinforce concepts.

By Justin S

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Dec 12, 2019

Very basic introduction. Would have liked a little more substance than just the QnA section with some people in the field and a couple short readings. This entire course could have been the first week in a real course. I also think the quizzes could have been better. They just copy paste sections of the reading to make sure you read the reading assignments.

By Jenny C

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Nov 14, 2022

Actually all 3 weeks' contents could be covered in one video and 3-4 readings. I don't know why there're so many short videos in such an unstructured way. Too many not-so-important materials which should be reorganised to save learners' time.

By Ka H W

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May 2, 2022

This course proves a general introduction to the field of data science. The information is not particularly useful. The quizzes questions are trivial and irrelevant.

By Gerard K

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May 2, 2022

Mostly opinions about what data science is, rather than exercises to develop hard skills and deep knowledge.

By Karl H

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Jul 15, 2022

All the quizzes had nothing to do with data science and more to do with reading comprehension ability

By Abdullah T A

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Dec 26, 2021

Huge wast of Time To be honest

By Julian W

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Jan 12, 2020

Really disappointed with the whole specialisation... I am leaving this review here because probably you might not check the others courses before you start it.

Specialisation is short and it is the only good thing about it. It took me I think 10-12 hours to do it.

So first of all the whole thing is not really informative. A lack of videos - Most of the time there is only "power-point"presentation with code written on it. I don't really understand why they have narrator who just read text - no emotions almost like a machine.

Courses:

1. You will spend a lot of time learning listening to videos about how sexy is to be data scientist... and that parents start sending their daughters for data science (sic!), and that it is a new science... Plus some rather simple information which you rather know taking into consideration you want to study it online. At least it is nice to watch - there is life in it.

2. You will spend the whole course watching different notebooks like jupyter R studio etc . without really learning any useful stuff. In the end you will just click run to create some already written commands in python. Yeap that's it. I know it is intro but adding 1 +1 third time in different console...

3. You will learn some methodology - A lot of complicated knowledge read by narrator who is not making it easier or more interesting. Almost like somebody reading you technical book...

4. SQL - you will try to learn it from presentations. I think there are no proper videos just images in narrated power point presentation. I watched some coursera lectures about sql before but still I had problems with following it. To make it worst you will have to use IBM products which are FREE - other reviews are probably outdated. The problem is that materials from this course are also outdated. So they are presenting you IBM tool-set which is already different. It is a problem because they are not even trying to show how they work just where to click.

I managed, you will too but, IBM, please do better.

By James M

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Jul 24, 2023

This was an absolutely miserable process. The course and tests are more akin to elementary school reading comprehension exams than actual tools for teaching and evaluating students. It is absolutely unbelievable that this passed and acceptable and to the standard for IBM. I learned absolutely 0 useful information, completed the entire course in under an hour, and have nothing but wasted time to show for it. To top it all off one of the end exams is a peer reviewed assignment which is absolute nonsense, and the other is closer to trivia about the required readings than anything else. The cert, or badge, or whatever garbage I'll be getting for this isn't worth the electricity it took to turn on my computer and complete it. I'll be taking the easy route and get my next IBM badge from a cereal box.

By steve l

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Aug 17, 2020

Be warned!!

I took this course and completed then got my 'digital badge'. However, for me and 100's of other students (according to the forums) our grades and progress disappeared. Coursera, are telling students to report the issue but after 2 weeks and hundreds of complaints nothing has happened.

The course itself is OK but when you are PAYING it is very poor support.

By Sujatro G

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Apr 30, 2022

Repeats the same thing over and over again. Great as an indroduction, but needs to cut down on the number of repetitions. The length of the course can easily be halved or made 1/3rd the original.

By Zahid S

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Jul 15, 2022

Very verbose, time consuming and basic. This specialization could have done without this course or a shorter version of this course.