Course Name: The Data Scientist's Toolbox
Platform: Coursera
Rating: 2/5
What the data scientist's toolbox is aimed at, I cannot tell you. Well, the course description says it gives you an "overview" of things, but plainly put, to me it seemed like a course put together so they could offer the 9 courses neatly in bunches of 3 (3x3). The other two courses flanking it are much, much more extensive and demanding.
This course is the equivalent of a walk in the park - no, wait, it's more like being pushed in a pram in the park. The project is a joke, especially if you know Git. All you have to do is create a repo and some other basic tasks, like install RStudio. The quizzes didn't require you to work with any data sets (unlike the other two courses that were offered simultaneously). The videos... well, after around 16 videos in the first week, we get 8 in the second and a paltry 4 in the third. An entire week was devoted to Github and Markdown, both covered at a little more than surface depth. To add to the lack of concrete content, we don't even get a 4th week (unlike the other courses in the "Data Specialization" offering). Clearly, content in this course is lacking.
For all that they did wrong, however, learning about confounding variables was interesting. I'll still have to go through the forums again, and evaluate peer projects, but I doubt I'll find any positives there. At best I can say the video lectures were well produced. I'm trying, I really am...
I'm shocked that they have the audacity to charge ~50$ for this course (though I did it for free). The only plus point here (looking at it in a selfish manner) is that you can easily complete this course and walk. Not much of value is mentioned here, and I would say for data science, you'd be better off trying out other courses instead.
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