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Learner Reviews & Feedback for The Data Scientist’s Toolbox by Johns Hopkins University

4.6
stars
33,829 ratings

About the Course

In this course you will get an introduction to the main tools and ideas in the data scientist's toolbox. The course gives an overview of the data, questions, and tools that data analysts and data scientists work with. There are two components to this course. The first is a conceptual introduction to the ideas behind turning data into actionable knowledge. The second is a practical introduction to the tools that will be used in the program like version control, markdown, git, GitHub, R, and RStudio....
Highlights
Foundational tools

(243 Reviews)

Introductory course

(1056 Reviews)

Top reviews

LR

Sep 7, 2017

It was really insightful, coming from knowing almost nothing about statistics or experimental design, it was easy to understand while not feeling shallow. Just the right amount of information density.

SF

Apr 14, 2020

As a business student from Bangladesh who is aspiring to be a data analyst in near future, I love this course very much. The quizzes and assessments were the places to check how much I exactly learnt.

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6401 - 6425 of 7,122 Reviews for The Data Scientist’s Toolbox

By Anthony W

Feb 5, 2021

It has a lot of potential but it would really benefit from slowing down and explaining steps a little more slowly such as integrating R Studio and Git, and how to use Git and push from R studio to Git. For an online course, there's no need to rush through this content and judging from the comments in the forums, many people have problems with their instructions, or lack of.

By Allen D

Apr 26, 2017

There is a pretty big jump from the content to actually completing the assignment. The assignments are not well aligned with the swirl learning or the videos. There is no logical process taught about how to move forward if you get stuck. It often means a student is forced to search the internet and hope the answer they find is appropriate so they can write their own code.

By Varun B

May 17, 2020

I liked the course, but I'm still quite uncertain on many aspects; feel like I have a lot of grey areas. I think adding a small project video, and how the different tools (RStudio, GitHub, GitBash etc.) come together on a project would have been powerful to clarify how this comes together during a project. Not for us to learn or emulate, but to understand the big picture.

By Marco M

Jul 1, 2020

Establishes an overview of what Data Science is and introduces some necessary vocabulary. The installation instructions and github setup will bore IT-professionals to death, but my be useful to other students. The final test should really be scored by a bot instead of other students of this course -- as it is, it needlessly wasted my time with clickwork.

By Sumit S

May 5, 2020

I think first course is only about installing, installing and installing. If they cover more introduction to the field rather than only installing that would be nice. But to show how to install and perfectly run the software is very necessary and the did that job very nicely.

looking forward for the next one hopefully that'll be also good as this. :)

By Anushree V P

Oct 25, 2018

The course structure is really good. The content is good too. I found the speed a little too fast. Plus there should have been some small exercises in between before the quiz to make the lesson more interesting and intriguing. Another point that I would like to state is that, the slides could be even better and visually appealing than they are now.

By Kathryn A C

May 3, 2020

The content is fine, as an introductory course, however, the computer generated lectures are a travesty. There are enough mistakes in the text-to-speech translation that make for a distracting experience, and if you are really a novice, could be problematic. I wish that the teaching staff would go back to filmed lectures with a real professor.

By Aketzali A A C

May 26, 2020

Es un buen curso al principio, un poco básico. Te enseña a instalar el programa R y GitHub, siento que si no estás familiarizado con programar, puede que no te sirva mucho. Por el otro lado, si ya lo sabes hacer, puede ser que sea repetitivo.

Acabe el curso en 3 días, así que es un poco breve para el tiempo para el que está programado.

By Jairaj A P

Aug 26, 2019

i felt this course was very disorganized. It introduces terms and concepts not explained before. There was an assignment on creating forks. This process was not in any lecture. Of course, with R and GitHub you can find anything on internet.

The lectures narrated by Amazon Polly is very boring. It also messes up some of the terms.

By Lou O

Jun 21, 2016

It's ok. After the first lesson, I should be able to provide a clear elevator pitch with a high level understanding of what I can expect to accomplish (4 or 5 steps) as a Data Scientist. Instead, there was one slide that touched on this quickly, somewhere in the middle. What are the problems, how do I solve them, give samples.

By Pamela D

May 11, 2020

I guess this is the basis for the work to come in the program, but it should be called "installing RStudio and using Git". Not useful for anything but getting ready for real work. The videos were annoying - I just read the text instead of listening to the computer voice and having to pause and restart as I did the work.

By Sandro G

Sep 21, 2016

The first course is composed in articulate way that allows a simple and schematic way of comprehension, but some single parts of the first course seem to be lacking of some information, above all to me without previous experience in informatics tools like github. Maybe I suppose to master this tools too long in advance.

By Ashok N

Mar 13, 2019

literally i lossed the feeling of real time learning and it seems like just reading. i really do not like this kind of teaching style. infact direct teaching by the instructors is being a good experience rather than using this kind of technology

i reas all the course content, without listening by recorded speech

By STEVEN V D

Nov 15, 2017

Good introductory course for the specialization.

Video' probably need an update as they're all cut in the end.

Also some more background and a little more extensive lectures would have been nice.

Anyhow, it did the deal: an introduction to R, RStudio, Github and Git.

Curious what the following courses have to offer.

By trung n

Jan 21, 2020

The course size is pretty small compared to other courses I joined in Coursera. It took me only 3 days to complete the 3 day course. I think all setup guides should be left as assignments for students with some links where we can refer to on our own. Anyway, the course finally convinced me to start using R.

By Mohamed H

Dec 15, 2016

Instructor speaks very fast so that i read subtitles instead of hearing what he say, in addition to i stop video more times to understand what he say, but totally the scientific and technical contents are great also his advises for us in which how we can find the answers for our questions about data science

By Jose O

Feb 6, 2016

The part of explaining Predictive and Inferential Analysis is confusing. I think it won't hurt to give some more specific examples and methods used in each case. Both types of analyses involve sampling, so I think it is necessary to keep it clear how that sample can be used to either "infer" or "predict".

By Fred P

Mar 6, 2016

the lectures are full of the Prof misspeaking, this leads to you not knowing how to complete the task because the Prof can NOT communicate properly to us while we listening to the lectures... it seems like they completely missed the fact that NONE of us are data scientists...

Now your Audience......

By Alejandro O

Dec 17, 2017

I put three stars because it should be specified more how basic this course is, is almost that this is done for somebody that doesn't know almost anything from CS. So it should integrated with other kind of specialization. I hope that the following courses have some serious math and advance topics.

By Don J

Nov 12, 2016

The course goes over the basic toolkit for data scientists. Overall it seemed too easy and maybe a bit simplistic. I was expecting more. There was a lot of optional reading made available in week 1, perhaps some optional assignments/quizzes related to that reading could be added to the course.

By Diego N L

Sep 23, 2016

concepts were very good but teaching method/material must improve...some of the materials and methods used are too unstable to be useful for professional use...more work should be done by instructors to separate the 'reliable' concepts/info from 'interesting to know but not ready for mass use'

By PULKIT G

Jul 6, 2020

The peer-graded assignment system needs to be changed. Because there are few users who deliberately mark one's assignment wrong, despite that I verified from my teachers who said that they were correct.

Since this happened with me twice, hence I gave 3 stars, otherwise I could have given 5/5 .

By SANTIAGO G

Oct 21, 2020

I found this course useful in terms of how to use GitHub + RStudio. However, to somebody with experience and knowledge about data analysis in general and R in particular I found it to e very basic -- perhaps that could be an advantage to newbies. I also found the quizzes to be way to easy.

By Steven M

Feb 12, 2016

Very basic material, but a good introduction and a necessary step to ensure a baseline of knowledge for future courses in the data science specialization. I would only take this course if you are interested in the specialization otherwise save your money and google the info you need.

By Noah M

Feb 11, 2016

Insufficient available project available for review and thus unable to pass course due to technicality. This is a major problem. The course should still be passable even in the absence of sufficient other projects to review, which is a problem that no student has any control over.