This is an excellent course. It covers a lot of material, but is very well organized. Gives a great introduction to infectious disease modeling that is intuitive and easy to follow.
I think it is appropriate that the knowledge level required for this course is "intermediate". If you are a novice R programmer like I am, you will need to grow your R knowledge.
If your knowledge of differential equations is rusty, like mine, do not despair. If you've never taken a class in differential equations or calculus--you will need to understand the equations at an intuitive level. Understand that differential equations express change in quantities over time and their solutions are the values themselves over time.. Learning the required inputs to deSolve and understanding its outputs is absolutely critical to success in this course.
I had a lot of issues with the Jupyter pages. I never figured out how to copy and paste R code to the Jypyter cells or from previous pages as was suggested in Week 3.
I had some background in epidemic models from another Coursera MOOC using spreadsheets and difference equations. I learned a great deal of additional material from this course. I think the instructors were superb communicators and the material was well thought out.
I am glad I took the course.
