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

A complete waste of anyone's time who knows anything about data science and would seek the data science specialization on this site. Further, the course material thus far appears to be a paid-for repackaging of free instructional materials offered by IBM at bigdatauniversity.com. Why I had to sit through this material is beyond me in the context of a data science skills tract. Please, stop wasting professionals' precious time and money with this material. This material took me merely a weekend to get through, not 3 weeks, the framing of which seems questionable at best. Please remove this from the overall specialization. My experiences thus far make me feel that I may not continue with this set of courses if this is the level of quality I can expect.

Why do I need to know which publication said a particular thing about a topic. Why do I need to remember in what year something happened? Why do I need to remember who quoted a particular thing. The course was amazing. The quizzes were set by some idiot who had absolutely no understanding of the course. Rather than testing the knowledge they chose to test unnecessary details. Frankly, the quizzes were not enough, they needed more questions and all needed to be relevant and not pulled out of a hat at random. Absolute trash questions in the quiz. This is my first IBM course and if this is the kind of questions being asked I am very sorry to say that the course is way below average in the quizzes. However, I did like the actual course and videos.

I am subscribed to and paying for the IBM Data Science Professional Certificate and when I attempt to submit a quiz within the "What is Data Science?" course the submit button displays "Upgrade to submit". When I attempt to go through any of the customer service or chat windows which themselves are hard to find, the chat window does not display properly or function in the slightest. This was also the case when I attempted to submit a support request or create a ticket within the mobile app. Terrible and frustrating experience. At this point I'm unsure as to what to do besides cancel my subscription and give up on the money I have already payed as they seem to be instant on not allowing you to contact any customer service representatives.

There should be an option to rate zero stars !

I am CS graduate, and also has deep understanding of learning algorithms. Isn't it's a huge waste of time, spending three weeks to recite the definition of data science and data scientist ? I believe most of the students in this course are somewhat from CS or equivalent background. And for them its just a trash!

People, maybe high school kids may say oh no its such a good course, i never knew data can be such impactful bla bla bla, they might find this course little bit useful than just googling : "what is data science ?"

And the quizzes, lol that's just joke. You have to recite salary figures from supplementary pdf so it might make you feel good! who knows !

I've invested a few day intensively doing the first 5 weeks of the course which were merely Data Science propaganda but no real content. I went for this course first because it focuses on Python, while I already have some experience on R. Luckily I've thought of trying a different course (same total length) and on the first 2 weeks of content I've learn A LOT, sadly it's on R. Also tests for this course are of very little use, asking precise anecdotic information like who said something, mostly from the last part of the texts, to test whether you've read till the end I guess, but not useful for learning Data Science.

I am absolutely not happy with the course. The material is plain; the quality of videos is low; the concepts are mostly described by a robot with automated voice. Assignments rely on the fact that a student does not think on her own but finds the related phrase in the text and copies it. Peer reviews are unfair - I got a lower grade in spite of the fact my answer was in full accordance with the criteria, however was not a 100% copypaste, I dared to use my own words.

Really a pity - I was hoping to complete the specialization. Will probably search for something of better quality and fairer community.

Lost quizzes that I took multiple times, weeks after I'd completed the course and issued a certificate, Coursera web site now saying that I didn't complete it, and the certificate is missing. Many others have posted in Coursera forums reporting the same issue. We have reported to support and keep getting the same answer "our team is working on it". No timeline for resolution, no updates on progress. Nobody can complete the program and obtain the Data Science Professional certification if this class is not marked as complete.

I can't even pay for it! It's not the course's fault, but the Coursera platform, but I'm desperate, I can't even try to pay for it anymore because it appears canceled and it's not even on my cart anymore.

About the course itself, the first 3 weeks marked are all about selling the course to you. there isn't much data science learning.

At this point, I'd rathe take another youtube free course where I can actually access it completely

This is not a course. I was upset when a subscription was renewed and I immediately cancelled. I tried to get a refund but coursera would not allow. You will learn more from youtube. This is a gross waste of time and money, and goes on to show how superficial our fixation on certificates are. The course is an insult. I could have taught the three weeks on an A4 paper, instead of watching some uninspired students.

Don't pay for this course, it's useless. For example: What's Data Science? It's what data scientists do. And at the exam you should have answered exactly like that, even if you don't have any idea on what's the meaning of "data". And this should be a "Professional" certificate. Try to answer like that to someone about whatever question you can think of and they will burn you alive.

The worst MOOC I have taken by far, the material being taught is all over place. For example, during the lesson on git command line prompt. The instructor was showing git commands BEFORE showing you how to actually linking the SSH and your github account to your computer. I read the review forums and it doesn't seem to get better, for python section either. Dropped the class.

Useless BS Fluff class. Make some of this optional reading in another class, but don't make is seem like it has any value. You risk loosing people in different cert programs. It makes a cert program look inflated, such as 9 classes...with this being one of them it's really only eight classes. Then you start with this BS and you question the value of the entire program.

IBM Modules and IBM cloud account sign in are buggy. Student is left to find round about way to access materials. I managed to complete by going through multiple forums on how to access IBM materials on external net. A Paid course shouldn't be expecting this out of a student. The study material is amazing but please please make it easy for students to access it.

If you want to know what newspaper publisched in wich year about data Science and what are the names of talking persons about data sciene from different companies (questions of the test) and that you keep doing good in math class and informatics (I am Senioner Engineer) this is a course for you. If you want to learn technical skills about Data Scince skipt it.

Too basic, useless and total waste of time and money. You get nothing out of this course except for some basic information about data science that you could have easily learned from various free online sources out there. I agree with other reviewers that the only purpose of this course is to drag out the certification process so that it costs you more money...

During this course, be prepared to wade through the huge paragraphs of the text. There are not so many practical exercises, just two, so most of the time you will play the game is true-false. The final assignment is not much about practising big data or data science technologies. I hope there will be increasing of the number of practical tasks.

waste of my money. Did not learn anything new, may be good for people coming from non-technical background. Video snippets without much technical value or learning isn't of much value to me.

The image recognition exercise is also not up to the mark in detecting parameters. I felt very disappointed and at loss with this course.

i was charged for this course without any prior notification mine money was deducted from mine account when I requested for refund there was proper channel to place query regarding refund. coursera is just a fake they take money in the name of education , it was mine life biggest mistake to come here

This is really bad, I completed this course last month, and got the badge, no my grades disappeared, with not answer from teaching staff or coursera support, I'm not the only one.

I have to redo the course, due to the lack of support, I just want my professional certificate.

The quiz questions throughout the course seem to be asking the queston 'Have you studied?' instead of 'Did you learn the anything?'. This approach does not work well for me. I don't need to know the exact wording of a sentence to know if the meaning of it is correct.

This section of the course feels like a complete waste of time... Most people who have signed up for this program know what data science is and watching a bunch of random people give generic speeches about their opinion on it is boring and a waste of my time.

There is nothing new I have learnt here., to know the definition of Data Science and its applications why would someone do a course of it, instead one can browse the definitions in Google search. It's just waste of money to invest in the course like this.

Not at all worth it.

Just provides insights to the field in layman terms without actually providing knowledge to a beginner.

All the lessons in the course are just interviews with people.

I do not recommend this course at all.

Would have rated it 0.5/5

For the amount of money this course costs, I learned very little. I must admit, my feelings of disappointment are strong. Coursera is going to charge me the cost of the course and interests as well for learning a couple of terms.

I feel cheated.

Self serving plug by the author to promote his book and his thesis work. There are much better courses

Note to Coursera: The slides and videos are outdated. There are a number of forum posts calling for help.

Dismal experience. Worst course ever.