Way too theoretical. This is Excel, not Information Theory....

Not enough practices for the unexperienced students.

Definitely way more statistics than I expected.

inclination was more towards concept than excel

Tough Course.. Need Mathematical Background

good, but no material and lack of structure

Too much theory and no excel learings.

Not so comfortable with using Excel.

good course, but need to uptade it

It was great to have this course.

Not so relevant with real work.

It was an interesting course.

Final project really hard

Not much explanatory

Very theoretical.

good course

great!

Summary: the course started out well but gradually lost effectiveness. Details: About Me: I started the course very interested to learn about the topics pertaining to statistics. I am strong in math (A's in every math class for my engineering degree, father was a math teacher, brother is a PhD in math) and had good motivation at the outset. I took plenty of detailed notes but by the end I felt pretty disconnected from the course. I spent probably 80 hrs on the "20 hr" class. This included a lot of time practicing, watching videos on YouTube and googling to try to get more information and explain missing elements. About the Instruction: I have no doubt that the instructor is very comfortable with the subject. Unfortunately there were instances where one term was used in the lecture and another used in the assignment or exam. This left gaps that took me hours to resolve. "Oh, you said Y but you meant X." In a field where a single piece of punctuation completely changes the meaning of a variable, details matter. Changing something's name without notice is confusing, even if it is only from the technical (used in lecture) to common (used on assignments) version of the word. Also, I feel like some of the more complicated topics (especially towards the end of the course) were not adequately explained. I am a very diligent student and felt pretty rudderless going into the final. If there was a way to reach a human for real-time feedback, I didn't find it. The chats are months or years old and there's no apparent office hour. I didn't try real hard to reach a human, so forgive me if there is a way to do so. I engaged extensively with the AI Coach. Sometimes it was pretty helpful. But it hallucinated, returned incorrect math values (it admitted so when I called it out), and constantly returned formulas in code notation instead of math notation which more easily read by humans when actually writing math. I would ask it to only use math notation, it would agree to do so, and then immediately return code notation. Data management: IMO, the course would benefit from massive simplification of the number of spreadsheets used. In my folder for this class I have 47 files. Some are my notes, some are PDFs of how to use spreadsheets, some are unique spreadsheets and some are copies that were necessary for exploring permutations. It became pretty unwieldy to find the right tool for the job (also in part due to inconsistent or vague terminology). Maybe consider grouping sheets/tools in an organized workbook. Seeing multiple links throughout the course for what eventually might be the same document I already downloaded is confusing. Also, I got burned once where I used one of the templates in practice and a value had changed such that my input values were different than those used on an exam. So, I had to keep downloading copies of the same template just to make sure it matched the values assumed in the test questions. Anyway, I learned SOME interesting things but left with an overall feeling that Statistics/Data Analysis is more difficult than I expected. I don't look forward to using any of these tools. Not because the math is hard (it isn't), but because my path in learning about the subject was convoluted, inefficient and half-baked. It isn't 100% clear how to use the tools (when/where/why & nuance of interpretation). (End)

PROS:

- Classification lecture is good;

-Weekly assignments are challenging enough

CONS

- No slides provided. Professor draws on an eletronic chalkboard (with a very bad handwriting) and you need to keep going back to videos when you are doing the homework. For me, this shows lack of professionalism and laziness

- Some excel sheets are provided. But they are very messy and badly formatted, matching the messy handwriting in the videos. AND, the instructions are for MAC! No instructions for PC are provided whatsoever. I never used MAC, so I had a very hard time!

- Very few examples real examples are provided;

- You learn math concepts, not Excel skills! Except for the LINEST function, which is very handy, BUT it's NOT TAUGHT in the videos. I had to google the function to learn it.

- They say to complete each piece of the final assingment after you finish the respective week related to that piece. But they only say that as you start week 6!

- The course doesn't provide sufficient material for the final assignment. You get stuck without knowing how to get to answers;

- Some answers to the final assignment are not correct, you check the answer sheet, and the results aren't present in the test!

OVERALL:

I'd never recommend this course to anyone. I only took it because I'm plannening to finish the specialization.

I've taken several Online Courses (5+ on Excel), and this is the worst and most frustating one by far!

An interesting course, however, undermined by the number of topics addressed that for their complexity would have deserved a more systematic and less random treatment. The course is based on several pre-compiled excel files that should be a demonstration of the theoretical topics covered. This approach does not ensure the mastery of the theory by reducing the quizzes to the mere filing of cells with predetermined formulas.

I find the part on linear regression the most catastrophic. Having personally some basis of statistics, I have somehow managed to complete the course, but the treatment, especially with regard to the concept of entropy in information theory, should be completely revised. I don't understand why Professor Eggers doesn't start from basic concepts and then expand to more complex ones instead of the opposite. The final work, despite the formulation, is almost completely incomprehensible (check on the forums to believe), as unfortunately often happens here on Coursera is judged good-natured and the general level is very low, with a wide degree of plagiarism.

Understand that this is a course in Data Analysis that utilizes excel, not a course in excel. That being said, that's not my main reason for the lower rating. The math taught in this course is not geared well to people who struggle with math. Much of the learning time is devoted to understanding the math at a theoretical level. Much of the terminology is inadequately explained, and thee are too many instances of mathematical proofing over concrete, numerical examples. What numerical examples there are tend to be deliberately specific, simple and limited because the instructor wants you to take what you learned and apply it to the more complicated problems using your own understanding. Sadly this does not work when you don't understand the math with only a few simple examples and the theoretical reason as to why it works as a reference. Additionally the mentor for the course forums has very similar problems to the professor, relying on complicated mathematical terms and definitions that mean very little to someone who wasn't able to get it the first time.

This course was a bit frustrating. It identifies as an Excel course but you spend your time opening models built by the instructor and moving one cell or another to find answers. I found that this lessened my conceptual understanding (as we didn't build these Excel spreadsheets and really didn't have the tools to understand their construction). I found when I took a 10 question multiple choice quiz, I needed to download/find at least 10 Excel spreadsheets. The videos too do not seem to present the materials cohesively and sometimes it fells as if bits were cut and pasted from here and there in other courses. Additionally, provide more reading materials. Not all learners learn from lectures. Reading would help. I really was ready to quit several times in this course but because I spent so much time figuring things out, I moved onward, but I don't believe I will complete this course series. It is definitely not a beginner course.

The course was a bit disappointing. We didn't cover enough advanced Excel functionalities, opting instead to focus on 2 statistical models (Binary Classification and Linear Regression). Having a BSc in Economics, the Linear Regression tutorials and quizzes seemed infantile, while the Binary Classification tutorials proved to be too vague, when we actually had to apply this knowledge on the final project. In retrospect, I regret not starting to work on the final week's material right from the start, which resulted in having to switch session multiple times in order to finish the course. Even if I had done so, though, it wouldn't have made up for the vague instructions in the quizzes and assignment of the final week that made feel at a loss, until I asked for help in the forums. All in all, this course need some serious re-working, in terms of how the material is presented and how the assignments are phrased.

I did learn a few helpful tips for analyzing data with excel - particularly how to do a regression analysis in excel which is something I didn't know and is not intuitive. But for a course that is supposed to teach you how to analyze data in excel, there are actually very few lectures that actually show you how to do anything in excel. So much time is spent on how to calculate stuff by hand, without even mentioning how it translates to excel. Also the lectures have a lot of errors that were not corrected in a professional way. Just a random slide put in as an afterthought. The lectures got a bit disorganized towards the end, like the professor was in a rush and then forgot to relate everything to actual business analysis. The final project was especially difficult as not much was explained - I had to read the forums to figure out what I was actually supposed to do.

This course was tough, but I dont mind a challenge. But what I found frustrating about this course was that first the quizzes were often inconsistent with the lecture material, the TA's were less helpful than my fellow classmates (without whom I would not have made it through the course) and the final was an IMMENSE challenge that took over my life for about 1 week - despite the calculation by the instructors that it would take 6-8 hours. I did give it a few stars because I honestly did learn things I did not know, and I understand the value of the application of what was taught for modern businesses. I have been informed that the course is being reviewed by the instructors for strengthening and I 100% agree with that direction.