This course requires some background knowledge of mathematics, and the exercises require some hard work. It's interesting, engaging, and has a lot of knowledge on offer!
After more than 20 courses taken in Coursera (mostly in Math, Ecomonics and Computer Science), this is, by far, the WORST course I have ever taken. The content is fine but it very badly designed as MOOC. I am droping this course after the first week.
On the Peer Graded Assignments it became very clear that most students simply did not have enough math background for the course. I peer reviewed 4/5 assignments and on most of then I graded zero. The problem is that these same students will peer review your assignments. Therefore, you dedicate your time and you will be evaluated by people that do not even know what the correct answer is, what is the point on this? I felt as being part of bad experiment...
Given this a MOOC with thousand of students enrolled, the organizers must implement a fair format to grade the students. It is very clear Peer Graded Assignments format that was implemented is not a option, it put your grade on other's hands.
This will simply repel any student that want to take a serious course and would really undesrtand the course content.
This was a recurrent complaint on the forum, but nothing real was done. I logged a message on the forum, but the TA and organizers never replied.
Curiously this problem is not happening on the course "Introduccion to Enumerative Combinatorics" that implemented a better format to grade the students.
I am not sure if Coursera could do anything about, I just hope Coursera take this feedback seriouly and try to implement higher standards to prevent courses like this.
