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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Basic Statistics by University of Amsterdam

4.6
stars
4,363 ratings

About the Course

Understanding statistics is essential to understand research in the social and behavioral sciences. In this course you will learn the basics of statistics; not just how to calculate them, but also how to evaluate them. This course will also prepare you for the next course in the specialization - the course Inferential Statistics. In the first part of the course we will discuss methods of descriptive statistics. You will learn what cases and variables are and how you can compute measures of central tendency (mean, median and mode) and dispersion (standard deviation and variance). Next, we discuss how to assess relationships between variables, and we introduce the concepts correlation and regression. The second part of the course is concerned with the basics of probability: calculating probabilities, probability distributions and sampling distributions. You need to know about these things in order to understand how inferential statistics work. The third part of the course consists of an introduction to methods of inferential statistics - methods that help us decide whether the patterns we see in our data are strong enough to draw conclusions about the underlying population we are interested in. We will discuss confidence intervals and significance tests. You will not only learn about all these statistical concepts, you will also be trained to calculate and generate these statistics yourself using freely available statistical software....

Top reviews

PG

Apr 20, 2016

This is a nice course...thanks for providing such a great content from University of Amserdam.

Please allow us to complete the course as I have to wait till the session starts for week 2 lessions.

AV

Jun 27, 2022

Instructors have provided concise explanations of the concepts. There are many examples considered that make statistics easier to understand! Also, the illustrations are fancy. I enjoyed every video!

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51 - 75 of 1,065 Reviews for Basic Statistics

By Jojo

May 14, 2016

Lovely accent, great lecture for the younger teacher. The older teacher really confuses me sometimes cos the language he used was very academic and hard to understand, besides he has a tendency to read other than lecture

By Pietro F

Apr 6, 2021

Very good video material and exercises.

A little bit too much R lab exercise, in my opinion.

Some minor typing errors.

Thank you for all your work, I learnt a lot!

By Paul F

Feb 11, 2021

It gives a solid background on statistics, but has a few legitimate flaws that are very frustrating for the student:

-the R labs are a good idea, but in practice become somewhat of a waste of time, and I do not feel as though I have really learned any practical R

-starting week 3, there are several errors on the screen that still have not been updated (I'm taking this course in 2021)--this leads to a lot of frustration as you often struggle to figure out why the numbers on the screen are what they are, and then have to check the discussion forums for clarity. Also, at the end of week 3, the lessons start moving very quickly, and are compounded by these errors, which makes it extremely difficult to conceptualize what is being taught. I am now looking at wikipedia and other sites to learn the concepts at the end of chapter 3, as all it did was confuse me.

By Kamal

Mar 3, 2016

The cartoons and animations used in this course really make statistics a lot easier and interesting. However few modules especially the later part of probability do not explain the concepts thoroughly. However, this is a great place to start!

Also, the addition of R exercises are a great idea

By Mridul B

Jul 20, 2018

Some statistical things require explanation which was missing.

By Courtney v S

Nov 10, 2016

Not very helpful. In the homework I spent more time wrestling with commands in R than actually gaining an understanding of the subject matter.

Also, I really didn't need so many subject matter examples about the professor's baby's pooping habits. (And my family is Dutch with all the offensive humor that comes with it, so it's not just a matter of the sense of humor not translating)

I'm re-taking Statistics with Calculus online at my local state university and frankly, I can't notice any benefit from taking this course first. My current online Statistics with Calculus course is rewarding and I feel like I'm truly gaining mastery of the topics, whereas in the Basic Statistics course I was floundering.

The graphics in the way the lessons are presented are well done! But I would have been just fine with fewer graphics if it meant more worked-through examples.

By RosaLin A

Jan 16, 2021

If you do not already know how to program in R this class is nearly impossible. I have a strong back ground in math and have had basic programming on the college level but could not finish this class. If you want to take this learn R first then take it.

By Hani O

Apr 9, 2021

I wish the course excludes the R ... time is wasted to implement by R and hence focus on syntax rather than practice on the subject itself which is stats. For example, it can be faster as a learner to implement using a spreadsheet.

By Daniel S

Sep 30, 2016

The lecturer does not clearly explain the topics very well especially on the topics in Probability and Distribution. His presentation in English is honestly quite hard to understand.

By Ante

Dec 15, 2019

This course is more about learning R-programming which is totally useless for me. The videos are nice. Try instead buying the book and do the excercises with python or excel.

By Yazhini C

Aug 16, 2016

R labs are too tedious for people with medical or science background! we need explanations rather than trying to figure it out on our own!

By Mayssaa D

Sep 17, 2021

The lecturer is very good but there is no reason putting R language in a basic statistics class.

By Gannon O

Jan 29, 2021

It started off well enough. Loved the visuals. Week 3 probablity was really confusing and my thoughts on the course started to change quickly. The R work helped a little, but I still didn't understand a lot. I feel like forumulas are thrown at you very quickly. It's almost like 'how much can we put into 5 minutes as quickly as possible?'. I'm at the end of week 4 now and quitting. I am not getting much out of this and tired of rewatching videos 5 or 6 times hoping to understand or memorize something. There is probably better use of my time. I will try Duke's version now.

How to improve this? Put some questions after each video. Waiting till the end to give the students some questions which causes them to go back and replay all those 'super fast' videos again - Feels a bit lazy as way to teach. Maybe its me.

Can someone on Coursera just simply teach stats without trying to tie in a programming language? Since its obvious by now, you guys can't teach both well in one course how about just focusing on one well? (I'm looking at you Stats w/ Python Univ of Michigan).

By Richard N B A

Feb 9, 2016

Puerile, made up examples with made up data, no deeper treatment of the mathematics involved than the here-is-a-magic-formula-use-it approach and mistakes (including serious conceptual and factual errors) evident in the quizzes and the R labs. Far better to look out for the "Data Analysis and Statistical Inference" course by Duke on Coursera that is presented by a passionate statistics teacher, covers the same material (and more) and provides a far better introduction to R than this course.

One of the stated purposes of this specialization is to clean up the way social scientists conduct science and are perceived as scientists; in this respect, it appears that the worst enemies of social scientists are social scientists.

By Muhammad U Q

Nov 16, 2020

R Labs are a total waste and these should not be the part of the course as we are not here for the programming language, the sole purpose was to learn basic statistic not some programming language. going to unroll

By Assad N

Oct 6, 2020

please write the requirement necessary to complete this course, one can chose if he is capable of doing the lab. although statistics is basic but i wonder the computer skills are not.......

By Scott P

Aug 8, 2016

this course was a waste of my time; luckily I found out after wasting only 6 hours on the preview. this course apparently requires a level of probability knowledge I don't

By Robert W v Z

May 5, 2021

No interest in or use for R, ever. Moving to another course on statistics that does not require silly programming.

By Dr. J P M

May 2, 2020

Not a great course.

By Florian D P

Jan 15, 2023

I learnt a lot through this course, and I think it is great for people who did not study mathematics or statistics but are working in science / programming now.

The exercises and quizzes of this course are not difficult, if you watch the videos carefully. I did most of the course in the evening after working for 8 hours and I really appreciated the kind and lighthearted atmosphere and general vibe of the presenters.

I was amazed by the production quality of the videos. The team really worked hard to make the course interesting. This course really is an example of what online courses are supposed to be!

Some complaints that could also be my fault or just my preference:

(1) I had some problems at the last test. I did not pass the first time. I looked up the videos to the problems that I failed. I thought I had applied the correct formulars and the video supported my approach to the problem, but it was still wrong in the test. I still do not know whether I misunderstood or if they made a mistake.

(2) I do not like that they enforce rounding to 2 decimals in many exercises. I was stuck several times because I stored the value in a variable instead of rounding it before submitting the answer.

Anyway, great course though! I wish they had more courses like this on Coursera. Many teachers really need to take some notes from this class.

By SHEILA D D S

Dec 21, 2021

Não confunda básico por fácil. O curso mostra os conceitos básicos em estatística utilizando exemplos divertidos, que chamam a atenção e suavizam a natureza fria dos números. Porém ele não é um curso fácil, apesar de não precisar de grandes pré-requisitos, você poderá se beneficiar do seu background na linguagem R, se tiver, por exemplo. É possível para quem não sabe programar aprender a utilizar a ferramenta, que já vem com todos os pacotes estatísticos que vc precisará utilizar, sem nenhum esforço de instalação, por exemplo... Isso é ótimo para você conseguir focar na parte que importa, que é somar o que está aprendendo em estatística à linguagem de programação. Tem espaço para melhorias: as dicas da ferramenta ainda possuem errinhos de formatação afetados pelo browser de internet e as fórmulas poderiam ter seu processo de construção contextualizado, em uma janela separada do tipo: "Saiba mais", "Saiba como essa fórmula foi descoberta", "Quer saber como essa fórmula foi construida?". Porém o conjunto da obra compensa tudo, instrutores divertidos e atentos, vídeos curtos e com revisão final bem amigável, perfeitos para aprendizagem e capacidade de atenção dos adultos.

By bidhan t

Mar 21, 2023

one of the best platform for gaining the knowledge in very simple and concise way. The course Basic statics has been very easy to understand with such an amazing faculty and the way of teaching in every video is such a simple and easy to understand . The subject basic statistics has always been very hard and difficult subject for me but this platform has really given me such a great experience to learn in fast and easy way without any kind of doubt arising even if any kind of doubt arises the faculty is so humble and kind to solve each and every problem of the students and this is the very new and instant problem solving for the students which is really admired by me . I hope other students will also like this concept of problem solving with in and hour and this is what makes course era special that other platform . once again i would like to thank the entire course era team and the faculty of basic statistics who helped me to complete the course in the given time and i feel very lucky to have platforms like this who can help me build my knowledge as well as my career in future .

By Alejandro N J

Jun 23, 2016

Excellent MOOC. A great introduction to the basic elements of statistics. I had studied statistics years ago in my bachelor but almost forgot everything. This course greatly helped me revive all the elementary concepts. The teachers explain complex things in simple terms easy to follow, and the funny examples have brought a smile to my face more than once and twice during the MOOC. Finally, the collaboration with professional illustrators adds great value to the course. A big deal of effort has gone into its making, and it truly pays off. I just wished there'd be an intermediate and advanced statistics course to keep digging into it!

Thanks a lot!

Alejandro

By Stacy H

Jun 30, 2016

I hadn't touched math in any real way in years and this was a great re-introduction. The videos were fun and engaging, and while the material was challenging, I felt I got a lot out of it. I highly recommend it for people who need statistics for their work or for a degree program but who are feeling a little intimidated by it.

As far as feedback goes, I would have liked to get explanations for quiz questions I couldn't answer. I wish there was a way to say, "This is the quiz score I'd like to accept; now please explain to me the ones I missed." The lack of feedback on the quizzes was frustrating at times.

By gerald k

Apr 19, 2016

This is a great course. It was challenging but not discouraging. I think that there is a high probability that I learned something very useful. Now that I have said the most important words now I would like to give a thumbs down on the Data Camp R section. I found it to be frustrating and discouraging. You can find better information and tutorials on YouTube. Check out"MarinStatsLectures. A text book is also a great help. I bought Elementary Statistics at a used book store for $4.00 US. And it correlated very nicely with the course. If you are interested in statistics this course is a good first step.