To set the context, I have a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. I am a working professional (13+ years), but just getting into the field of ML and AI. Apologies for flashing this preamble for every course that I review on coursera.
This course is the 5th and final one in a 5 part series offered by Dr. Andrew Ng on deep learning on coursera. I believe it is useful to take this course in order and it makes sense to study it as a part of the series, though technically that is not necessary.
This is one of the best courses to take if you want to understand the basics of Sequence Models (Recurrent Neural Networks). RNN is a technically-difficult-to-understand, still-evolving field of Neural Networks, and it has thus far found remarkable uses in a wide variety of field, ranging from Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Voice-to-Text conversion and Music Synthsis, to name a few. Dr. Ng really exposes us to this cutting edge research, by explaining research papers that were only recently published. By now, I could see how the problems would be tackled. However, there are several subtle aspects, such as the optimal metrics to use, the clever modification in the NN architecture, etc. which Dr. Ng drew attention to and made clear.
The instructor videos are very good, usually 10 min long, and Dr. Ng tries hard to provide intuition using analogies and real-life examples. The quizzes that accompany the lectures are quite challenging and help ensure that the student has understood the material well. As with the other courses, the programming exercises are the best part of the course. You get to practice, (1) Music synthesis, (2) NLP and Sentiment Analysis, (3) Trigger Word Detection (Hello Google, Hey Siri, Alexa!), ... All these problems are actual, real-life projects, which are extremely difficult to solve. They help the student practice the strategies and also provide a jump-start for the student to use the code for their own problems at work or in school.
Overall, this is an excellent course. Thank you Dr Ng and the teaching assistants, Thank you coursera.
I HAVE A HUGE GRIPE WITH COURSERA's TECHNICAL SUPPORT. THEY DO NOT HAVE A READILY AVAILABLE TECH-SUPPORT EMAIL ID. YOU HAVE TO SEARCH THROUGH THE WEBSITE CAREFULLY TO FIND A CHAT LINK. I HAVE RECOMMENDED COURSERA TO SEVERAL FRIENDS AND MANY OF THEM ARE VERY UPSET AT THE SUBSCRIPTION POLICY, WHICH IS SNEAKY. IN FACT THE WORDING IS ALMOST DESIGNED TO CHEAT YOU.
I have been a huge supporter of Coursera and hate to give this negative feedback here. I would have easily subscribed to many other useful and important coursers that Coursera offers, but will now be doubly careful about doing so.