Learn (and Maybe Get a Credential in) Data Science

I enrolled in the "Data Analysis" Coursera class this fall, on recommendations from online acquaintances, to see what Coursera was like and to start getting the hang of R.

As far as I can tell, it's closely similar to module 4 here. (One notable difference is that it relied on plot exclusively rather than ggplot2, for some unfathomable reason.)

The experience was a mixed bag. I did learn a bunch of things I didn't know; however only a small fraction of the course covered theoretical concepts, and as the course progressed it focused more and more on memorizing R commands without any deep understanding of the math they are based on.

I'm not at all convinced that the video format is more effective than a book with the same information. I watched videos at 1.5x speedup, sometimes read the transcripts and skipped segments of video entirely. What value I found there was in doing the exercises, and there were relatively few of those. A couple of the "correct" answers were in fact incorrect, generating controversy in the student forums, but the instructors/administrators didn't seem to care much or even notice.

MOOCs are sometimes advertised as "self-paced" learning; in the case of Coursera, this is a lie. Because I enrolled late, I wasn't able to get official credit for any of the exercise sets I completed (I also skipped the problems entirely). On the one hand it's nice that you can enroll out of phase, but on the other hand it's sort of silly that an online course is still tied to an artificial schedule. For instance, if you are going faster than the class, you will still have to wait for each segment to be opened on a weekly basis.

Finally, I've just discovered that because the class I took is now closed, I am no longer allowed access to any of the videos, quizzes and assignments - nor to my own results. I don't think I need to harp on how broken this is.

When I first saw this and realized that it was 9 courses long plus a capstone project, I was really excited! Then looking a bit more deeply, I see that they are 3-4 hours/week each and each is 4 weeks long. Though they recommend taking them in order, if you look deeper, it's pretty clear that you can take the first 3 in one batch, the second 3 in another, and the third 3 in another batch. That's 12 weeks at 9-12 hours/week... or, basically, the equivalent of one university class... for $490, which is about the price of paying per credit-hour for a 4 unit course through an average extension program at a public university. It will probably be great quality, but don't expect to have "credential-level" knowledge after taking it.

Cool.

For those who don't want to wait until April 7th, Udacity is scheduled to launch their own Intro to Data Science on Feb 5th (this Wednesday). I expect it to be easier/shallower than the Hopkins/Coursera sequence, but it wins on actionability.

Students will learn how communicate

Didn't spot that on the first read; a member of a rare species: the self-refuting prophecy.

If only they used Python.

You pay $490 and get what exactly? Afaikt the business model is, pay $490 to get exactly the same level of treatment as someone who does not pay a cent but with a piece of paper you can print out confirming you are not a liar?... If it offered credit, that would be one thing, but the fact that is doesn't is quite telling .(I guess it is impressive that coursera has found a way to print out "certificates" with the John Hopkins logo on even though no-one from John Hopkins will ever see or interact with any of the students though) You don't get any feedback or assessment, you just get some added signalling value. Still - the courses look interesting if pretty basic.