Chevron Left
Back to Introduction to Data Science in Python

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Data Science in Python by University of Michigan

4.5
stars
26,898 ratings

About the Course

This course will introduce the learner to the basics of the python programming environment, including fundamental python programming techniques such as lambdas, reading and manipulating csv files, and the numpy library. The course will introduce data manipulation and cleaning techniques using the popular python pandas data science library and introduce the abstraction of the Series and DataFrame as the central data structures for data analysis, along with tutorials on how to use functions such as groupby, merge, and pivot tables effectively. By the end of this course, students will be able to take tabular data, clean it, manipulate it, and run basic inferential statistical analyses. This course should be taken before any of the other Applied Data Science with Python courses: Applied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python, Applied Machine Learning in Python, Applied Text Mining in Python, Applied Social Network Analysis in Python....

Top reviews

YH

Sep 28, 2021

This is the practical course.There is some concepts and assignments like: pandas, data-frame, merge and time. The asg 3 and asg4 are difficult but I think that it's very useful and improve my ability.

PK

May 9, 2020

The course had helped in understanding the concepts of NumPy and pandas. The assignments were so helpful to apply these concepts which provide an in-depth understanding of the Numpy as well as pandans

Filter by:

5151 - 5175 of 5,915 Reviews for Introduction to Data Science in Python

By Shubham K

•

Sep 8, 2019

This course requires a lot of self learning from students, it would have been great if there were more video lectures. I found this one a little bit difficult for me because it required a lot work by my side. The course is okay i will say. It gives a general idea of what this field is all about. I really loved the articles this course provided , they were interesting and informative.

By Adriano H G d S F

•

Mar 17, 2021

Para os amigos brasileiros, a semana 3 e 4 é bem difíceis. O curso aborda demais o Pandas, no entanto pra mim só alguns pontos foram úteis, pois não mexo tanto com data frame. Mas é sempre bom saber que existe. O professor é maneiro dá bastante exemplo, porém muitos exemplos não casam com algumas partes das atividades, as vezes você precisa ver a documentação e tals. Mas faz parte.

By Gavin C

•

Feb 10, 2018

A decent introduction to data analysis using python, particularly introducing the pandas framework. The material can be a bit uneven and disjointed, and the assignments sometimes leave you guessing what is actually required, but overall this was a useful intro to the topic areas. If you're prepared to supplement the course material with your own research you'll get a lot out of it.

By Mary A H

•

Mar 22, 2019

The assignment difficulty is much, much greater than the rather basic instruction provided in the lectures. This results in a lot of google searches to figure things out. I feel I could have received an equivalent level of education on my own, by reading books and doing free exercises online. I don't feel there was sufficient value added by the course over independent study.

By Jaret V

•

Oct 11, 2021

It took an extremely long time to complete these assignments. In addition, I think the teaching could be improved. With the fast speaking and coding during the lectures, often it requires reviewing multiple times. And, it is never very clear what is going on in some of the lecture applications. This style of teaching is not my preferred method, but it is only my opinion.

By Justin W

•

Oct 3, 2020

PRO: The lectures and content are good. CON: The version of pandas the grader uses is quote old, and is older than the version used in the assignment notebooks, meaning some code that runs ok when you test it crashes in the grader, *with no useful error message*. This caused a lot of hassle and wasted time for me, but hopefully they've fixed it for the new course.

By Bianca Z

•

May 25, 2017

The course per se deserves 5 stars, however the "grader" (=the program which checks you programming) is a pain in the a**. I once submitted a float but it wanted a float 64 ... well yea ...

The Tips in the discussion forum are great - however they could be highlighted better (e.g. extra post).

I especially loved the discussion prompts. I thought them very important.

By Manuel

•

Oct 2, 2018

Although material and assignments provide a good way to learn Python, the estimated time is understated especially for beginners. The challenge is not only what the assignment is asking but dealing with the autograder and making sure responses are syntactically exact. It's easy to spend hours on one question so make sure to make good use of the discussion board.

By Vivek S

•

Mar 20, 2018

Lectures should be more in depth especially when going over the concepts in python. They should show at least couple of ways to solve problem under discussion to help drive home the discussion point. Assignment questions were not constructed properly and were very confusion at times. Having a correct answer (not the solution) would help in debugging the issue.

By Vincent R

•

Sep 12, 2020

A very interesting and challenging course that would benefit from replacement of the somewhat disturbing living background of the videos, a slower-paced delivery of the lessons, the proper identification of the key functions and methods that are required for the assignments, and replacement Kudos to Yusuf without whom I would not have complete the course!

By Vishal D

•

Mar 12, 2018

Really good problem sets and discussion forums. Unlike some other courses, this one doesn't provide much in the way of useful videos. Essentially, you get problem sets and have to search pandas documentation or StackOverflow for help, or look in the discussion forums. Still very useful in learning pandas, but the "classroom" part is not worthwhile.

By Bryant C

•

Jan 14, 2018

It was a good introduction to Python for those who are familiar with programming basics, however, the assignments were quite ambiguous at times and did not involve much material from the actual course lectures. Nevertheless, the discussion board helped along with the TA providing helpful hints, guidelines and test code for solving the problems.

By Justin D

•

Feb 24, 2019

The course content was OK. It's jut a pity that the assignments section was so frustrating to use. I needed around 10 attempts for each submission just to realize that I forgot a print() or that the file names were not exactly as in the requirements... In total, I spent half of the time allocated to assignments just to hunt for stupid errors.

By Randal P

•

Feb 26, 2017

The course was helpful in presenting typical problems in data science, but the lectures showed you examples in one area of pandas and the assignments asked questions in different areas of pandas. I found the assignments frustrating and spent much of my time trying to understand what they were asking rather than actually solving the problems.

By Sameer G

•

May 28, 2021

The course is good but needs a bit more comfort with programming concepts than what the "Python for Everyone" course provides. Also, the course length could be slightly longer - a lot of material seemed to be rushed with not enough time to really grasp the concept before moving to the next one. Still, it laid a good foundation to build upon.

By Vishesh A

•

Aug 21, 2020

The assignments in the course are designed to really test your skills and knowledge. However, I did not find the lecture videos to be much useful. For the assignments, I had to look most of the stuff on the internet (Stack Overflow and Pandas documentation). The course is definitely worth it if you are ready to spend time on the assignments.

By Andre d W

•

Sep 14, 2019

The content of the course is reasonable. However, the time needed to read documentation and forums is not factored into the estimated hours needed to complete the course. Lastly, having to sign up for the whole series just to take one course is money making racket. And then you have to cancel the other courses which is very inconvenient.

By Keith M

•

Jan 12, 2020

Great and detailed course, but very confusing and possibly inconsistent 'beginning of recession' question in assignment 4. After much research online and note of teaching staff definition of the quarter to look for, I still got it wrong according to the autograder. But strangely got everything else right that depended on this answer?!?

By Aarish N

•

Jun 10, 2020

Though the information and knowledge provided was a very effective and great insight, I did feel that the course was a bit rushed and fast-paced. Big topics cannot be understood with a 3-minute video that barely touches the theory and gives only one example. Practice should be accommodated before we enter those difficult assignments.

By Miguel F A

•

Nov 21, 2016

The course is interesting, but the grading system needs to improve substantially. The grader bugs considerably, and the questions are often not well defined, which requires a lot of unnecessary trial and error to understand what exactly the question was about. Finally, complete the assignments took way long that what it is suggested.

By Ting-Yi C

•

Jan 5, 2022

Participants should be familiar with numpy and pandas because the teaching pace is very fast. The assignments are long questions which make them sort of complicated. Even so, there is no simpler practice to familiarize yourself with numpy and pandas. I will get back after reading the textbook or watching helpful videos on YouTube.

By Jose P O P

•

Dec 1, 2017

It is an interesting course that shows you part of the extent of the things that you can do with the Pandas library within python. However don't expect to be able to code everything by scratch, instead expect to be able to google the answers for your coding questions and be able to adapt those to your particular coding objectives.

By Ali M

•

Jul 2, 2023

I am currently taking this specialization and I find it very practical. However, I suggest that the exercises be updated regularly. Please note that the exercises should test creativity rather than being simple questions that can be asked in a chatGBT, and the use of a chatGBT should also be considered as part of the curriculum.

By Kaelo M

•

Jun 6, 2020

The assignments are great and challenging.

Lectures leave a you bit short or not fully equipped to take on segments of the assignments, that I understand and accept however I feel it they should hit at least what else do you need to go out and learn yourself in order to complete the assignment.

Oh and the grading system, eish.

By monsoon85

•

Mar 22, 2017

Good and necessary introduction to Python. But especially Assignement 3 regarding cleaning the data should be improved. It´s good to know how to clean the data but it´s confusing when Q1 is apparently correct but actually it´s not. Mabye it would be better that Q2 - Q13 based on a new dataframe which is correctly by all means.