What went good: Handy ipynb notebooks, great labs. Nice course to refresh python knowledge

what didn't:

- Audio sometimes included some buzz, everything clear enough, but audio quality coult be improved.

- Several errors in quizes (example - question where you open("somefile","w") and write to it, and the possible answers - "You append, You read, error" , some questions in final exam were VERY poorly formatted

- List comprehensions were not covered, just referenced in one of labs.

- Time series were not covered as well, course could benefit a lot, covering these in another 4 minutes video and some lab

- In video Watson something API keys creation were referenced, stating the instructions will be in lab, I didnt find any.

Overall nice course, with a bit more love from staff it could shine

The course covers a number of topics Basic Python, Pandas, Numpy, and an intro to machine learning and AI. At the start of the course the labs did not work correctly. I downloaded the files and ran them locally which worked great. Later in the class you are introduced to the IBM Watson/Cloud service. You can establish a free account for 30 days. You can run the labs "in the cloud" if you cannot run locally. So, if you cannot run locally or in the class portal use the IBM cloud. The class is not really a beginner class, you should have experience with Jupyter Notebooks and Jupyter Lab before you start. A lot of topics are covered quickly. The Pandas section is covered quickly, and towards the end I felt things got rushed.

The Course is designed for absolute beginners. I am an absolute beginner. For us, every added element not otherwise discussed in the course is unnecessary difficulty. Absolute beginners don't even understand coding, ibm cloud to the level of the complex questions raised in the course. Think of novice IT students as individuals who have absolutely no idea beyond daily interactions of apple and windows. So when we are asked complex questions, we cannot understand it. But with extra time we eventually all get there. The course is very well designed, but it would be great if the final assignment is made from topics covered in class. We are not at the level of being exploratory in programming! LOL

Completing the course during earlier Spring of 2020 was a challenge. "Lab Migration" led for great instability and availability of the jupyter lab notebooks required for the labs. Multiple day outages became more than a minor inconvenience. Switching between different lab systems was a non-trivial. It is an IBM provided course, but using IBM watson, is a questionable choice for this class.

As an introductory course to Python for data science, course material was at an appropriate level. I wish there was more time spend on the basic with using Pandas and numpy. I spent quite a bit of personal time researching other websites to learn more of the nuances of using them.

It was fairly easy to complete and informative. I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because of the issues with course materials that came from the IBM older website cognitiveclass.ai/

. Several instructions were presented using graphics that is unreadable on higher resolution monitors - even with zoom in browser set to max. They also referred to older version if the cloud.ibm.com and it took a lot of completely unnecessary effort (on part every participant and even some of the course TAs) to figure out how to overcome those. You could hire three tech developers/tech writers for about a week to completely update instructions. Instead 160K participants struggling with them.

Overall a very good intro to the power of Python. I'm a SAS programmer and this course helped me get a handle on object oriented languages and how the relate and differ from SAS, as an example. I really liked that I didn't have to download or prepare anything on my computer to use python for the course, it was all handled in virtual spaces. I didn't give 5 stars just because there was some inconsistency in the ramping up of the labs, or the quizzes at the bottom of the labs. Some of the labs were very easy and then boom, suddenly I'm being stretched way beyond in the next task to perform. They were useful learning tasks, but it was pretty jarring.

First of all, I feel happy to learn.

I know I'm not supposed to say how to teach, but I got the impression that most of the "Python for Data Science, AI & Development" program was very fast. The videos are super fast, I know I can pause but I think it was going against my learning.

The Hands-on labs helped to understand a lot. In that sense, I think that videos should be used to complement or highlight crucial information instead of repeating the content twice.

And for someone who doesn't know Python programming, it was a crash course.

In any case, I appreciate the opportunity and the Coursera platform with the labs available to work online are excellent.

Really nice pace - simple to follow and labs were cool (some issues with the lab notebooks not loading up - not sure what the issue was here, but continuously trying to open them seemed to open them finally). The final assignment needed a bit of critical thinking towards the end, as there was no prior teaching of linking IBM Cloud to IBM Watson, so inputting codes from one site to another was awkward and felt hit-and-miss (thinking, wait, is this what they want me to do, or is it this?). Overall, a wonderfully-designed Python introductory course with a couple of teething issues with notebooks. I would recommend the course.

This course was very helpful and full of valuable information. However, I would have appreciated more instances of directed practice. Maybe a few more scenarios in order to practice what I have learned. The labs were very helpful in illustrating each lesson but there was little practice available. I enjoyed using IBM Watson, it seems very useful however some of the instructions were unclear and having to create new accounts for each task was a bit annoying given that I would definitely have to signup to use the services in any substantial manner.

All in all, it was a good course but it could definitely be improved upon.

Luckily, I was familiar with python when I started this course, so I could review and understand quickly. But I can easily imagine that it can be a headache for a real beginner. Lots of contents are being taught in a fast pace in short videos, which can be confusing for a beginner. Also the examples could have been a lot simpler and clearer. Sometimes the examples even confused me about a topic that I already knew about perfectly.

Overall, if a beginner spends enough time on this course and keeps searching and reading about the concepts, it can be a very useful source of knowledge! Cheers

There is a lot of good learning to be had in this course. There is also a lot of improvement needed to ensure that the instructions in the course align with the IBM Watson web pages, menus, and instructions. It delays progress because one must try to figure out how to do what the instructions say given that IBM Watson's website has changed since this course was written. Also, just a note - for videos associated with IBM, there are an an awful lot of typos and "misspoken" sentences. A good overall review is needed. That said, I really did enjoy the course once I got into the real learning.

The course is shallow but quite broad i.e. it covers a lot but just gives you very few basics of the topics. It would be quite helpful to note the topics that are covered and use them as guidelines of what to know during your studying journey.

The labs are very very helpful and you might find yourself spending a couple hours on a lab that should supposedly take you 15 min :D. Varies from person to person though so it's all good as long as you come in with the goal of learning rather than just getting your name on the certificate.

All the best on your journeys.

The videos and practice notebooks were well made and informative in a concise way. Even though I had already done Python programming before, I had never taken a basic course on it so it was useful to get a structured intro to some of the basic ways of data structure manipulation that I wasn't aware of. My main minus point comes from the final assignment which is a bit too easy - given the fact that it's a programming assignment you could make an automatic grading system like on many other programming courses on Coursera and make the assignment more challenging.

The course was very informational. I loved the layout of video (intro), then lab (hands on and interactive experience), then quiz (testing what you learned). The only thing I did not like was Week 5 where we worked with Watson. It seemed like we were working on things that we did not learn throughout the course. I would have preferred if we were able to continue working in a python environment outside Watson and using information we actually learned in the course. To be honest, the end of the course was quite frustrating. Overall though, great! Thanks.

The course is overall nice, but at some points in hand-on lab the exercises jumps to new functions which has not been discussed previously. Furthermore, there is a bit of repetition in between videos, reading material, and hands-on lab. In between the repetitions there are some new points, which is good, but at the same point you might skip them thinking you have already went through it. I feel it should have more exercises with gradual difficulty curve. These are my concerns, but the course is really nice to go through the basic concepts

I really enjoyed the subject matter in this course. Sometimes the information presented in the videos is presented in a rapid fire manner, which makes it challenging to follow the line of thought (I'm a complete beginner to computer science/data science). Also, I (along with other students) experienced some frustration with labs not working/loading. However, when trying again a day or 2 later, it seemed to work without any glitches. The final project was enjoyable, but I wish there had been a lab similar to the dashboard project.

The course does a good job with teaching you the general basics of Python. Unfortunately, it doesn't go into details as I had hoped. Moreover, I was disappointed that the final project relies heavily on the lessons learned near the end of the course. Nevertheless, it is a good course since it can be quite challenging for beginner programmers. For instance, you need to retain all the previous knowledge you obtained each lessons. Also, there isn't only one way to find a solution as you will learn in the final project.

Functions and Classes lab questions were slightly harder than the rest of the programming labs. It would have been so much better if every time I was running the test code to see if I had built the appropriate function/class, what was the output. Not being able to see the output I didn't know what I had to change on my code to make it right so it took me a while to go through these labs.

Also I had some issues with the two IBM's APIs. I couldn't make them run, I'm not sure why.

However, overall it is a great course!

This course is pretty much an overview/an introduction to Python. I feel overwhelmed with new concepts and content in week 3 & 4. For assignments and tests, you just need to know that instructors will write complex codes/functions for you and you are tested only on simpler codes at this stage. I found the homework submission on week 5 very interesting and helpful for me to know the implication of using python and libraries in real life. Also, you will discover new solutions to the problems from the peer rating.

Excellent for those who doesn't know even basic of python, Thanks to the instructor who make it very easy using a beautiful presentation. Nice and very interactive labs consisting more Gifs that make coding really enjoyable.I never feel like I studying something but I feel I just playing with the codes. However I deduced one star from it due to there is lack of information available in-order to create the dashboard in IBM cloud.Overall course is really good with an awesome case study as assignment at the end.

The first 4 weeks are fine.. But last week, no proper explanation is given for the "Hands on lab".. Few things are explained in the videos but while doing Hands On lab, we see that such concepts are not explained in the video.. So, the final week is really not up to the mark.. Instead of APIs, they could have covered some other topic or if APIs were so important, then they should have clearly explained each and every line in the "Hands on lab".

Other wise, the first four weeks are somewhat ok ok..

4 stars, because in general the course is well structured(as well as specialisation), packs you with all the necessary skills to strat Data Science journey...BUT the labs! They are in Jupyter Notebooks, which is good, but the labs have a lot of code snippets, which a beginner-level student doesn't need to see. Not to mention certain coding moments are outdated. My suggestion-provide a student with simpler, but with such tasks, which are possible to recreate in any Jupyter Notebook from scratch.

Some modules seemed disjointed and this shows in the Lab sessions where the difficulty levels varied (some were for beginners - as the course intended- whereas others were more intermediate). For the intermediate level Lab sessions, they were sometimes discouraging as it could make programming novices such as myself find the exercises too difficult. Otherwise, a great overview of Python for data science. Students are encouraged to already have some prior Python knowledge beforehand

Although I already knew basics of Python, the tasks related to data analysis were cool and engaging. The only thing that I really did not like were time estimates for labs. I mean, have anyone verified that? For example, it was stated that the lab should take around 15 minutes. Maybe 15 minutes it is when you DON'T READ anything and just blindly hit shift+enter. For me, to analyse those labs, make notes, check the code, it took a couple of hours. And it was a good thing, though.

The final task using IBM Watson Cloud was very confusing to me so that it take me almost 5 hours to solve the problem. The dealing with Python in the task was not a big deal: the real problem was IBM Cloud setup for hosting my Dashboard as .html and this was not the most important part of a Python course. All the rest of the course was quite useful and helpful. You team could make more intuitive this part of hosting to make the course the great course of Python it can be.