Friday, June 2, 2017

Cancelled Coursera's "Statistics with R" Course

I had posted that I was learning R using an online course at Coursera. Unfortunately, it did not meet my expectations, so I cancelled my subscription today.

The statistics video classes were really good. If the whole course was at that level of quality, I'd be happy to continue. However, I enrolled because I need to learn R. And that's the weak section of the course. The course is good to teach statistics, but not to do it using R.

The R sections is a lot like "follow the instructions you are given". So, if you are able to follow the instructions, you will get the results expected for the course. However, instructions sometimes are very confusing, and I had to go to forums to understand them (and then see many people with similar questions), wasting precious time. And, most importantly, being able to follow instructions does not mean being able to undestand what one is doing. I felt like I was not really learning R, even when I was able to do the required steps. So, now I'm studying with a book. So far, it has been a lot faster, less confusing, and with a better understanding of R. Let's see if this works out for me.

4 comments:

  1. That's interesting you wrote that. The exact same thing happened to me. I took an R course with coursera as well and canceled for the exact same reason. :) I hope you made it to the US safely and will enjoy your PhD journey my friend.
    Best wishes.
    Silvia

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