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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Python and Statistics for Financial Analysis by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

4.4
stars
4,047 ratings

About the Course

Course Overview: https://youtu.be/JgFV5qzAYno Python is now becoming the number 1 programming language for data science. Due to python’s simplicity and high readability, it is gaining its importance in the financial industry. The course combines both python coding and statistical concepts and applies into analyzing financial data, such as stock data. By the end of the course, you can achieve the following using python: - Import, pre-process, save and visualize financial data into pandas Dataframe - Manipulate the existing financial data by generating new variables using multiple columns - Recall and apply the important statistical concepts (random variable, frequency, distribution, population and sample, confidence interval, linear regression, etc. ) into financial contexts - Build a trading model using multiple linear regression model - Evaluate the performance of the trading model using different investment indicators Jupyter Notebook environment is configured in the course platform for practicing python coding without installing any client applications....

Top reviews

RH

Jan 4, 2024

It is an excellent course to apply statistic, probability and python methods in financial modelling. I would like that each section had resources to study statistics concepts related to the videos.

EJ

Aug 3, 2019

Great course! Very didatic explanations about financial and statistical concepts also with some interesting practical Python for Finance! Looking forward for new courses from same Univ. and prof.!

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526 - 550 of 916 Reviews for Python and Statistics for Financial Analysis

By Zhu, T

Jun 6, 2020

good

By Xiaobing C

Dec 22, 2019

good

By Polad V

Dec 24, 2022

5

By Gleb V

Nov 28, 2021

The overall experience is good. Below I will describe main pros ans cons of the course.

To the benefits of this course I will attribute, firstly, its low entry threshold for beginners. Secondly, it was quite close to practice: methods of munging the data, visualizing the data, building simple trading signals with the help of Pandas library methods as well as evaluating the strategy with Sharpe Ratio and Maximum Drawdown coefficients will be very useful in real life and I hope will safe many hours of exploring technical issues in Stack Overflow and similar resources. Thirdly, the structure of the course was very intuitive: we had an overview of main statistical concepts before we needed to apply them to real data.

As to the drawbacks of the course, first of all, the overwiew of statistical concepts was too superficial. The listeners who don't have previous statistical, economic or engineering background will certainly have a lot of questions unanswered because they won't go to the proofs of the concepts and ideas presented. Secondly, though we've built trading strategies, they can not be applied in real life because we've not touched such topics as trading fees modelling and bid-ask spread modelling. Thirdly, I don't understand how the signals we have created may be technically applied in a trading environment as we didn't bother these questions.

To sum up, it was quite good introductionary course to the signal-based trading with the help of statistics. However, I think it should be further developed to cover more practical aspects and suggest different ways for listeners to improve their expertiese in the field of trading and quantitative finance, for example, by links to other courses in this sphere.

By Jitendra D S

Sep 11, 2020

Using short videos was a good way to keep things interesting. The course was broken up into very manageable sections so I never felt I had too much work to complete in order to progress to the next section (especially since I work long hours and do not have much free time). The videos, along with the subtitles at the bottom of the page, were clear and easy to understand. The exercises were a little disappointing in my opinion. I believe the best way to learn most programming language is to type out the code from scratch and test at every step as you go along. I understand that some sections of the code we used to the analysis were complex, so my suggestion is to only include those parts of the code in the exercises, and have the student type out the easy parts repeatedly. For example the from excel, print, head, tail and other easy code can be filled out by the students instead of already having it in place. This will really help nail down the syntax and nuances of the language. You can include a help button that shows the correct code if the students can't figure it out themselves. Overall I'd give this course a 8.5/10 since I was able to apply this knowledge easily to my work. Thank you, Coursera & Xuhu Wan!

Jitendra De Silva

By Zoran

Jan 3, 2021

Not for beginners, but very condensed and a good summary if you know these already.

The course contains very condensed information which combines: statistical inference methods, intermediate python language and evaluation methods of trading strategies.

I would not recommend it if you have not done at least two of three: a) Completed basic statistics course b) Completed a beginner to python programming course c) Understand the basics of trading, creating and evaluating trading strategies (sharpe ratios, overfitting etc).

For me it was a pleasure to see such information condensed, as I've refreshed my econometrics (ie statistical inference methods) knowledge, I can use the code to create my own variations of strategies and dig deeper to testing and training of trading models.

But overall I would struggle if I would be missing knowledge, as every single word from the professor has a very specific reason to be there. Every words matters and is used to create a solid line of logic.

English could be better, but I don't care about that. All was clear to me.

By Justin Y

Jun 21, 2021

Learned a lot, however, it gets complicated really quickly. My intention for this course was to learn more about how Python is used in business analysis as this is something I am planning to do for college. I feel that it would be greatly appreciated if even basic statistics tools would be expounded more on as I did not really know these and it took a toll on my progress in this course. I would also appreciate if the labs were more hands-on, meaning that we would be the ones to build the code and applying our understanding of the videos. Although in certain labs this is done, some of the labs would just let me run the code that was already pre-typed. I think that allowing students to apply their understanding would allow them to remember more the lessons provided by the course.

I learned a lot and I greatly appreciate Mr. Wan for creating this course as it will certainly help me in the future.

By Claudio H

Apr 21, 2020

A fine introduction to the use of statistical models for finance (stock trading), showing its implementation in Python. It is NOT a course in either Python or Statistics but shows what one should learn. Alas, it does not give any pointers as to where to go to delve deeper into the needed statistics (nor trading, for that matter). It contains a fair summary explanation of linear regression models, but the recipes for their evaluation are discussed way too briefly.As for Python, it uses 4 common important libraries and directs the student to the corresponding sites. It gives no explanations as to the kind of structures being manipulated. The Jupyter notebooks are well set-up for practice.

By Kushagra S

May 21, 2020

The course provides an overview of how to build a quantitative trading model. However, the instructor does not go into details while either introducing python functions to someone unfamiliar with the language or talking about statistical concepts. I could follow the code based on my background in other programming languages.I will be following up this course with other courses that go in depth on both the programming and statistics front.The Jupyter notebooks are quite helpful and I will be using them for future reference.3.5 would probably be a more honest rating of the course but I don't think the course could have taught the learner more given its length.

By Brandon B

Sep 8, 2020

This course shares a lot of info on how to use statistical analysis formulas like RMS, p-value, std. deviation, etc., and how to apply this knowledge using data modeling in a really easy way. There are some small hurdles to get over when taking the quizzes as some of the answers can be interpreted in multiple ways. out of the 4 quizzes I took, i attempted at least all of them 2 to 3 times. Not sure if I failed to absorb the knowledge well or if the goal was to go back and review the course material with a finer comb, either way, I found the course helpful and useful. I'd recommend it to friends and colleagues.

By Matthias H

May 14, 2020

Good for what it intends to provide, namely a quick introduction to the topic, but it doesn't go very deep.

It is slightly annoying that there are plenty of typos and grammatical mistakes all over the Python code and the quizzes, which could easily have been avoided if either the author had somebody proofread everything quickly, or if Coursera had any type of quality control.

Nevertheless, coming from another programming language, I did get out of this course what I wanted, namely a collection of all the basic Python commands for this kind of analysis. So thank you for providing this course!

By sagar c

Jul 22, 2023

I would like to express my gratitude to the instructors and staff of the Python and Statistics for Financial Analysis course for their excellent teaching and guidance. This course has helped me to learn the fundamentals of Python programming and statistical analysis, as well as how to apply them to real-world financial data. I have gained valuable skills and knowledge that will benefit me in my future studies and career. I appreciate the opportunity to learn from such experienced and knowledgeable experts in the field. Thank you for making this course enjoyable and rewarding.

By JY M

Mar 2, 2020

In general a satisfactory course and not too to follow through. It is focused more on the stat side than finance which I kinda have a mixed feeling toward. Professor could probably have done a little better job on explaining the meanings behind the formula but for the most part it is not hard to figure it out yourself by searching or reviewing the materials a few times by oneself. I also feel this course is a bit short, and if in the future it can try to cover more topics that will be awesome.

But hey I did learn stuff and am happy to have taken this.

By 周伟涛

Jul 24, 2021

First of all, I want to thank professor Xuhu Wan, as i have benefited a lot from the course, which not only broadens my knowledge of statistics, but also helps me familiarize with practical application of python. Overall, this is a well-organized, inspiring course worth recommendation, although it would be better if the pace is a bit slower and the explanation of the code is more detailed and thorough. I believe this course helps build my python skills in financial analysis, and hopefully this experience can help me earn my PHD offer.

By Masaki S

Oct 22, 2020

This is an awesome course which takes you through the statistics for the financial analysis. The course needs some update to correct some broken links, inconsistencies. It requires some basic knowledge of statistics and python programming beforehand or study of these topics alongside this course, which should be made obvious to some learners who may be puzzled (I see in the forum that several learners were quite upset about some difference in expectation vs the reality which I think could be narrowed down).

By Bader A

Dec 27, 2022

A well structured course with a good base of learning in the first two weeks, I had a slight problem with the sudden leap in the intensity of the learning objectives in week 4 in comparison with the 3 previous weeks, but fortunately I went through it finely. I would like to thank everyone involved with this course. Well done!

Ps: You do not need to know how to use python to take this course, week 1 is a really good introduction even for the ones using python for the first time(just like me).

By Gonzalo A j

Nov 26, 2020

Es interesante, muchos comandos y cuestiones teóricas de los últimos temas se explican rápido y sin profundizar. He aprendido y revisado conceptos que ya sabía. Me queda la duda de como afecta el margen de la oferta y demanda al proceso de evaluar estrategias financieras. El uso de Python simplemente es una herramienta para explicar conceptos, no se aprende realmente a programar, aun así en la mayoría de casos es fácilmente entendible ya que todo sigue un razonamiento lógico.

By camillo s

Sep 6, 2020

The course was indeed helpful for my main goal to improve my skills using Python libraries to carry out mathematical / statistical caclulations.

One minor issue:

As I downloaded the notebooks for replaying them in my local Jupyter installation which is based on Python >= 3.6, I had to manually correct some statements due to changes in pandas, e.g.

pd.DataFrame.from_csv -> pd.read:csv or

pandas.tools.plotting -> pandas.plotting

mho it would be good to check for such issues

By Heung K Y

May 5, 2020

This course is more suitable for someone who has basic python knowledge. understand that there is a challenge with teaching programming languages via online platforms. It is quite difficult for the instructor to shorten the whole course into 4weeks material. Appreciate that the instructor and TA do spend time to answer student’s questions in the coursera forum. Candidate needs to spend extra time to view other sources to better understand the course material.

By Saikat C

Jul 22, 2021

Thank you for your effort sir, I am grateful. Unfortunately, the refer links used in the quizes did not work for me, I lost a few points because of that. I am an electrical engineering student, I do not know much about statistics or finance, but I am familiar with python. I had to do a little research on the terms directly related to those subjects like quantiles, covariance, p value etc. But, you did introduce me to a lot of new things in that way.

By RICHARD D

Nov 26, 2021

Exactly the Course right for me, Very usefull codes and Analysis used in this Course. Only that am the code used was Pyuthon 2 and some of the codes are OLD, It will be good to update the Cousre Cataloge and Modinized some of the Codes Used. This Course should be updated and add additional Courses to makeup a Proffesional Certificate that will prepare students Financial Analysis Position. The Course was very Usefull for me.

By Tristan H

Mar 31, 2020

A wonderful course to get an introduction into financial statistics and a few python basics. This helped me understand many things about prediction and trading strategies. However to truly understand how to code a financial trading strategy you will need a lot more practice than you get in this course.

I really liked the course and would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about financial trading and python!

By Nikola P

Jun 12, 2023

Nice course with a lot of easy to digest code. Concepts are clear and coding tools are very practical. however there isn't enough emphasis on checking step by step that data manipulation is as expected. Very dangerous not to do that when promoting that one can use this method to create a trading strategy. Plus every trading strategy has to have a trading cost consideration - none of that here unfortunately.

By Abderrezak L

May 7, 2020

-: some little mystakes, exercice level very low

+: large présentation that provide both python and core financial statistics skill within high level

Might need more time than expected, maybe twice, in order to code the exercice meanwhile watching the video. Cause the final exercice for each week consists just in changing some value. Not enough to know about coding. Except if you already properly know Python

By Rachel E

Sep 20, 2021

Covered a lot of good content ultimately but the pace was slow and basic content in week one and progressed to very intense by week 4, felt more time should have been given to the week 4 stuff. A lot more emphasis given towards checking models/ best fits than necessarily building them. Also a few issues with subtitles, and confusing quiz questions that didnt always match to the workbooks given.