Dec 17, 2017
Excellent course that is jam-packed with useful material! It is quite challenging and gives a thorough grounding in how to approach the process of selecting a linear regression model for a data set.
Feb 01, 2017
It really helped me to have a better understanding of these Regression Models. However, I've noticed that there is a video recording repeated: Week 3, Model Selection. Part 3 is included in Part 2.
por ANDREW L
•Jan 27, 2016
Better than Stat Inference, and gave some reasonable intuition, but could be improved I think by focussing on more understanding and less maths and formulas. Some of it did seem to be - here' s a formula, plug the numbers in to get the quiz question right, whereas in reality (in the world of work) that question is completely unrealistic - you have raw data and you need to do the regression and understand what it means.
por Feng H
•May 17, 2017
Not impressed. Dr. Caffo tried to use non-calculus, non-linear-algrebra ways to explain complex concepts and derivations. IMO, he should not have done that. It only made things more confusing. Also the final project is so unsatisfactory in that we were to analyze the data with 32 obs but 11 variables! How robust could it be? Was expecting something much more challenging than that.
por Normand D
•Feb 01, 2016
As for the Statistical Inference course, this course is amazing but is presented in a more complex way than it should be. Once again the concepts are simple and the math not so hard, yet I had to do a lot of research outside the course to be able to understand these simple concepts and derive the not so hard mathematics.
Brian Caffo is clearly brilliant and, I would say, seem to be a good lad too, but something is missing. Too often the details are thrown at us without being properly framed in the context or without having the proper concept being introduced progressively.
I have a theory about teaching since I was 15, and so far it has proven to be true. Imagine that learning is about climbing a mountain in which tall steps have been carved. Each step is taller than the student. The teacher is somewhere higher than the students (not necessarily at the top, if there is such a thing).
The job of the teacher is to throw boxes (concepts) and balls (details) of different size, shape and colors. The job of the student is to catch these boxes and balls and to put the right balls in the right boxes in order to make a staircase out of it to climb (at least) one of the giant stair up.
A good teacher makes sure to throw the concepts first than the details and to clearly specify which balls go into which box, as well as which boxes go inside/over which other boxes.
But most teacher simply throw the balls and boxes in an not so well structured manner, so the poor students try to catch as many as he can, but also miss a lot of them. His hands can hold a limited amount of balls. If he doesn't have the right box to put them, he would either miss the next balls, or put the one he hold in his hand in the wrong box.
Bottom line, the best teachers are those who focus on the concepts (and context) and make sure that the concepts are well understood before introducing details to stuck in these concepts. From my experience our brain (or at least mine) better learn this way. It is as if our brain need first to establish a category-pattern (the concept/context) to which it will associate detail-patterns. But without a proper category-pattern, our brain is having a hard time to properly remember the detail-patterns or miss-associate them to the wrong category-pattern (which create even more confusion).
Hope it was helpful somehow...
por Andres C S
•Mar 02, 2016
I think this course needs more emphasis on practical applications and less mathematical background.
por Janardhan K
•Nov 16, 2017
The course was of average quality. It could have been better. Brian's slides in the video don't correspond 1-1 with the slides made available. The coverage and explanation of the material could have been better. The instructor's presentation could be more engaging (fewer 'ums' while talking). It was not immediately clear how to answer some questions on the Week 4 quiz, and also the course project, even after reviewing the material multiple times. One example: Brian says that the ANOVA test can only be used to compare models, when the model being compared has normally distributed residuals (using the Shapiro test). No advice is given about what to do if they are not normally distributed, which is what happened in the project.
por Hendrik F
•Jan 17, 2016
I find it very tough to understand everything. Buying the course book helps to overcome this. You have to dedicate a lot of time.
por Rafal K
•Feb 28, 2017
Many things are not clear enough in multivariable regression part.
por Mertz
•Mar 20, 2018
Bad audio and video quality. Too fast on some complex ideas and too slow when come repetitions between videos...
por Zach
•Feb 04, 2016
There's just something about the course content that is difficult to attain. It's presented at way too high of a level without enough tangible examples of getting down into the weeds of how to actually perform and interpret the models and functions.
por Suleman W
•Nov 10, 2017
I did find it difficult to follow and understand some of the materials.
por Eric L
•Feb 03, 2016
good quick overview, could have more actual R examples in lectures
por Brandon K
•Mar 30, 2016
I found the videos tough to watch. I was hoping for something that would be more practical for non-statisticians, but the lectures mainly devolved into mathematical proofs. That said, I did learn some from this class. Just not as much as I'd hoped.
por Raphael R
•Oct 31, 2016
I am no used to this educational system so I find difficult to follow without any proof or demonstration of the mathematical tools. I find proofs necessary for a good understanding of concepts. Another benefit of proof will be to have a more rigorous framework for variable names in the explanations. Even though this is more a practical course, it will benefit from being a bit more rigorous ; so at least people can make proofs on they own.
Other than that, it is a great course. Very practical and to the point.
por Jinwook C
•Feb 14, 2016
The flows of courses instructed by Caffo(Statistical Inference and Regression Models) are too long to concentrate it and the quiz is not quite related in lecture.
However, Contents of the book is really good, as well as homework in the book.
por Andrew R
•Mar 07, 2016
The material presented was of course useful, but I never really felt like I understood how it all tied together, or what the big picture was. I think that some case studies that show how all of the concepts relate to one another, or how they are used in the bigger picture would be helpful.
Also, as a suggestion, I feel that if something is important enough to be included in the quiz, it merits more than the briefest of mentions in the lecture.
por Amol K
•Jan 31, 2016
This course goes on a very fast pace and simply does not have the charm of all the other courses in the specialization. I understand that a lot of content is covered within a month, but there should be supplementary course material available. Moreover, TAs should be more active on the forums. I have seen most of the questions just being discussed among the students. A little disappointed. Will probably have to watch all the material again to have confidence with it.
por Jason M C
•Mar 29, 2016
This is a decent class, covering linear regression and a few of its variants in good detail. It's a challenging subject, but presented acceptably here.
por Anamaria A
•Mar 12, 2017
Lots of material needs additional study (from different sources) as it's only summarily explained. Much math without the link to the praxis :-(
por Angela W
•Nov 27, 2017
I learned a lot, but it was so much content for 4 weeks!
por LU Z
•Sep 26, 2018
Starting from the first week swirl practice, course content is poorly organized making even simple concept difficult to understand.
por Jesse K
•Nov 03, 2018
The material was a little disjointed and not always explained with examples. Passing this course required a significant amount of outside study and research.
por Satish V
•Apr 08, 2019
The instructor's delivery and content, although very professorial was very dry. For students who don't have that much of a background in regression and statistical inference, I think it would be good to get to the gist/summary - i.e the what (what kind of problem we are trying to solve) and the how (how to do it in R and more importantly how to interpret the results).
por Rok B
•Jun 28, 2019
Useful class, but the content often simple in nature was explained in a confusing/complicated way. But the material is important and there is purchase for taking the class
por Will J
•Sep 22, 2019
Pros: The instructors of this course are absolutely knowledgable on the content here. The content itself is challenging and applicable to real-world data science challenges. Using R makes this a good course for today's (2019) current programming world as many professional statisticians will use this language day-to-day.
Cons: The content feels mismanaged. Sometimes the Lectures don't prep you for the practice assignments, and sometimes neither of those prep you for the quizzes particularly well. I had also hoped for some more engaging video content from a course this expensive. Having a professor in his office hastily work through material while there are police sirens outside isn't exactly pro-level instruction (It is in Baltimore, so I get it).
Overall, it's worth it if you've got the time to power through relatively dull lectures. The R based practice assignments are wonderful and the final project incorporates things together nicely.
por Prabeeti B
•Sep 17, 2019
Course has more theoretical concept than application.. It has to be more application based