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Back to Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners by University of California San Diego

4.2
stars
1,485 ratings

About the Course

Are you interested in learning how to program (in Python) within a scientific setting? This course will cover algorithms for solving various biological problems along with a handful of programming challenges helping you implement these algorithms in Python. It offers a gently-paced introduction to our Bioinformatics Specialization (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics), preparing learners to take the first course in the Specialization, "Finding Hidden Messages in DNA" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/dna-analysis). Each of the four weeks in the course will consist of two required components. First, an interactive textbook provides Python programming challenges that arise from real biological problems. If you haven't programmed in Python before, not to worry! We provide "Just-in-Time" exercises from the Codecademy Python track (https://www.codecademy.com/learn/python). And each page in our interactive textbook has its own discussion forum, where you can interact with other learners. Second, each week will culminate in a summary quiz. Lecture videos are also provided that accompany the material, but these videos are optional....

Top reviews

HD

Apr 17, 2016

I give this course 5 star because I did Bioinformatics I and I totally enjoy it.

This is where programming can be fun, and practical, and you'll learn some basic biology too.

What's not to love?

HL

Aug 15, 2017

I learned a lot from this difficult and time-consuming course! It covers biological concepts using Python. It made learning Python more interesting for me, since I have always loved biology.

Filter by:

376 - 400 of 445 Reviews for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

By TANIA M D P

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Jan 26, 2022

Good, but it is difficult for biology background students

By Laura D C L

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May 4, 2020

Useful but terribly difficult, it is not for beginners

By Yuchen W

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Sep 3, 2021

not for beginner who does not know any programming

By poojitha m

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Sep 3, 2023

Note: actually this course is not for beginners..

By Sanjeeb S

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Jun 21, 2022

Need more instructions for beginners like me

By Sumithra S

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Jul 27, 2022

A bit too difficult for a beginners course

By Aravind S

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Jul 31, 2020

I am not able to find the unenroll option

By Dr. A A M

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May 20, 2020

The coding is too tough for beginners

By Youssef M A

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Jan 16, 2021

Not really for Beginners at all !!

By Aymane K

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Nov 16, 2021

The course is not for biggeners

By AKSHITA J

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Jul 16, 2020

its quite tough for beginners

By Ashna K

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Mar 13, 2023

not at all beginner friendly

By Menaka S

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Aug 2, 2022

This course is a step above beginner, and more detailed explanations and defining why certain lines are code are used are needed to cater to actual beginners. Variables are suddenly introduced without any explanation, key words are casually mentioned without any context or definition supplied. You need to break this down if this is supposed to be for beginners.

Also, the pacing is weird. The first week you are given an actual week to complete the sections (6 in total with multiple parts in addition to learning 5 units of Python on Code Academy) plus a couple extra days with the quiz due. However, then the following "weeks" get shorter and shorter, despite requiring as much material as the first week to get through (and an addition of 3 units of Python on Code Academy) to the point that by Week 4, you only have 2 days to complete all the assignments, units, and quiz.

Finally, in regards to quizzes, it would be helpful to see the correct answers if you get questions wrong. Some questions, even after I passed the quiz, I had no idea why my answer was incorrect.

By Alexis W

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Jun 6, 2021

This course has you perform work through the Stepik platform, which then directs you to codeacademy to learn Python2. The content of Stepik is reasonable enough, but occasionally makes huge leaps in the coding and bio content that one is expected to know. However, the real problem for me was with the glitchiness of codeacademy. As someone with limited coding experience that is totally new to the Python language, I absolutely need this learning. However, I have reached an impassable point where even when using the website's given solution to 'get unstuck', I can't move forward even though both my code and the given code run and output as required! Multiple computer engineers and CS majors from my department have checked the solution, and just been baffled.

This course is a great idea, but is totally dysfunctional for new learners.

By Megan K

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Apr 23, 2021

I think this is a fascinating topic, but NOT as advertised. I have studied computer science for two years and consider myself confident in coding for my level. However, this course is not for beginners. A very strong coding skillset is needed for this course. Also, the time commitment is very underestimated. I worked through around 30% of the Week 1 modules, which were supposed to take an estimated 4.5 hours total, and it took me around 3 hours. At this rate, I don't think I will be able to finish the class and retain the material. I would love a more basic approach to bioinformatics for those who can not commit 40 hours to this course.

By Zsuzsanna Z

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Apr 30, 2019

You have to be very dedicated and have high frustration tolerance if you are actually a beginner in programming. This course expects you to complete the Codecademy Python Course in advance (which will take you several weeks) but it still won´t be enough to really keep up with the bioinformatics concepts that are introduced. Also, the explanations in the course itself are very, very rudimental, although the optional videos do a better job here.

All in all, I am glad I had the possibility for learning something new and I fought myself through the course but please don´t believe that it´s suitable for beginners.

By Rohit P

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Jun 4, 2020

Not one i would recommend to a beginner. I feel not so well by this course haha. It was tough, very tough for a biologist [ Primatologist/Zoologist ] like me but ofcourse i fought through & finished it. However, if any beginner wants to start this, i would recommend they learn Python atleast to the advanced level before approaching this course. That would make this fine. Also, the hours denoted to all weeks are not correct. Some weeks have 4 hours mentioned as the required time but those were the weeks that required me to put in 16+ hours. Cheers for the efforts to the team though.

Thanks!

By Daniel P

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Feb 15, 2020

As a biologist without any programming skills, I found this course REALLY difficult. That was totally unexpected as the description of the course states that no programming skills are necessary. I thought really hard to learn the Python by resolving Codeacademy exercises while trying to implement the language to solve the book problems. In other words, I felt that the platforms used in this course were very disconnected. In my opinion, it would be easier to learn python by directly learning how to solve simple biological questions instead of complicate ones presented in the book.

By Graham

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Sep 6, 2017

This course replies heavily (almost entirely) on codeacademy to teach the coding material. Unfortunately, the material chosen for this course does not line up with the courses supplied by codeacademy. If you want to follow the lesson plans as outlined here, you need to do multiple extra courses on codeacademy before you can reach the material discussed in the coursera lesson. As such, the estimated time for completion is drastically lower than the actual time to completion for people new to coding.

By Jorge M R B

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Aug 10, 2022

Stepik and codeacademy aren't the friendliest options for beginners. You can see that by the number of success on each Stepik exercise and the decreasing number of students each week.

I managed to undersand a great part of it mainly because I wasn't a beginner at either Biology nor Programming, but still, the programming part was hard.

By Mary C

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Jan 17, 2021

This isn't really a course for beginners. I learned a few things about biology, sure. But if I hadn't already known Python code, I wouldn't have been able to figure out half of the exercises in this course.

This course is do-able if you're willing to put in the effort, but it is not an easy introductory course to bioinformatics.

By Shyam P

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Jun 16, 2018

The quizzes were extremely annoying, they weren't hard but for example with the final quiz: I would properly calculate the normalized probabilities but every possible version of me rounding it was incorrect. I proceeded to show a friend who has a PhD in mathematics and he was equally stressed by questions like this

By Misheel E

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Sep 17, 2020

The description of the course is misleading, you do have to know Python in order to fully focus on the biological problem. Requires more than 8 hrs per each coding section if you are beginner. Wouldn't mark the class as Beginner.

By 飯田智光

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Jan 4, 2021

The course is hard for whose major is biology because there is no detailed explanation regarding algorithms. I do not recommend this course to people who have not studied programming.

By Banjul D

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Aug 18, 2021

the content is good but it is definitely not for beginners. the course content requires a lot of coding knowledge and basics of molecular biology to understand