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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Basic Statistics by University of Amsterdam

4.6
stars
4,361 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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1 - 25 of 1,064 Reviews for Basic Statistics

By Mark v d S

Apr 6, 2019

This course is very good. Make sure you know very basic principals of R-programming, or just programming in general. It doesn't have to be much, but a little knowledge will spare a lot of frustration.

There are a few errors in the course and the quiz answers here and there, and the forum is not maintained well. Brace for week 3 and 4! The instructor speaks very fast and unclear for some people (especially non native speakers I guess), and the material gets quite tricky in these weeks. However, it all gets a bit easier again later.

So much for my whining. The instructor(s) actually uses a lot of fun ways to dive into statistic methods. week 6 and 7 were an absolute blast to me. Finally, the course really teaches you a lot about basic statistics! So it does exactly what it is meant to do.

p.s. Don't stress for your final exam. You get more attempts per month than it says. Take a few hours for it though.

By Deleted A

Aug 6, 2016

One of the best courses of statistics for the beginners. The concepts are well explained, the learning path well researched and above everything the R labs were ideal for the beginners.

By Mike P

Jan 8, 2019

This class is fast paced. Weeks 1 and 2 are the equivalent of Stats 101 at a university. Some of the videos cover the topics too fast and would benefit from some additional examples. To truly learn the topics, I visit other sites that cover the topics in more detail, presented in a different manner, and provide more examples.

Pros

Comprehensive

Great illustrations

Cons

Requirement time is grossly underestimated in the course overview

Quiz questions can be stated in a confusing manner

Videos can cover topics too fast without enough examples or information

By Deleted A

Apr 1, 2019

The course is good so far...However be warned that you need to know the basics of a computing language called R. If you don't know this it would set you back by a many days. Then the option is given to reset deadlines and they charge regardless.

There is no advice stating "Know R " before signing up.

By Yuqin L

Nov 20, 2017

Week 3 really puts me off

By Syberen v M

Feb 9, 2019

The instructional videos are clear, nicely illustrated, and contain good examples that make you get an intuitive grasp of the course material. Exams are good and the feedback provided references the lecture in question, so that you can re-watch it, very nice.

The biggest drawback of this course are the R labs. The questions are extremely sloppy, full of spelling errors. Most of the questions could have been asked during the regular exam, since all you are doing is submitting answers, no programming needed at all. If there are multiple questions in one section, there is no way of knowing which one you got wrong, it will simply say "something isn't right", which is very infuriating.

I hope they will shift these questions from the R lab to the regular exam. Given that I'm paying a considerable monthly fee to take this course, I would have definitely expected this aspect to be better, and feedback to be taken seriously, which I don't think it is unfortunately.

By Jagannil B

Sep 9, 2020

Thank You, @University_of_Amsterdam for this wonderful course. I have really benefited a lot from this course. Thank you, Dr. Matthijs Rooduijn for making this course so lively and interesting!!

By Sara O

Jul 6, 2020

This course is quite poorly organized. The primary reason why I took this course was because I wanted to learn basic statistics without using python or R. Unfortunately for those of us who just wanted to learn statistics, this course requires you to learn R, which is something that should be made clear to people before they purchase.

As for the rest of the course, the first two weeks are done well. While the concepts are presented quickly, those two weeks have the benefit of having a "summary" video at the end in which all of the concepts are brought together using an example.

Starting in week 3, a different instructor presents the material. His primary goal seems to try and speak as quickly as possible without explaining much of anything. In fact, he will sometimes slur or stumble slightly over words due to this. The slides used in the videos are also riddled with errors., as pointed out by people in the discussion forums. Despite all of this, week 3 was still manageable because the material presented is very simple. As you progress through the course, though, and as the material becomes more complicated, I felt like I was just plugging numbers into formulas without really understanding what I was doing or the concepts behind those formulas.

All in all, save your money and go to stattrek or another site if you actually want to learn statistics.

By Kanglu Y

Feb 7, 2016

I love the main lecture of the statistics. The Subject is fun. After couple lecture, my mind was very clear.

But most of the time I'm working on the statistics software name R. I think it would be better if require R knowledge. If not, student like me will need more than weeks to get use to R. I don't mean learn another software is bad idea. I will always like to learn something new. That's why I go MOOC. What I mean is R and Basic Statistics should be separated. First R, than Basic Statistic. Or first Basic Statistic than R.

I really enjoy the class. but the extra is a bit heavy for me.

By Charudatta D

Mar 6, 2016

This course is really awesome. Designed well. Looks like a lot of efforts have been taken by the team to build this course. Kudos to everyone. Keep up the good work and thank you very much.

By Big W

Jan 7, 2016

---------- way too much time is devoted to introducing definitions and way too little time is given for student practicing and review . the presenter's accent is constantly impeding instant recognition of what he's saying. the subtitles sometimes don't accurately represent what he's saying. sometimes there are misspellings - which makes it even harder to know what he's saying. this student was inundated with formulas that needed to be practiced - and i didn't even have time to write them down !

By Stepheni F

Jan 1, 2020

I would give this course a 0 if it were an option. I have no use of R, I do not need nor will I ever use R. I am not interested in wasting weeks of my time learning a programming platform that I do not need. It is ridiculous that 80% of the grade depends upon me knowing how to use a programming platform! NO thank you!

By Summer

Mar 29, 2019

The instructor spend most of the time explaining the easy part like calculate the numbers but ignore the difficult part like explaining the concept and derive the equations. Although the whole team spend a lot of time preparing the course and try to make the course vivid, as a student with minimal statistic knowledge it is still really important for me to understand each concept and equations instead of just reciting them. For every equations that appeared in this course I was asking why, but there is no explanation of why this equation is like this and how you derive, there are just follow up examples to put the number in the equation and calculate them.

Thanks for the efforts your team put in this course.

By Daithi M W

Apr 19, 2016

The course is as much about computer programming as it is about statistics. The statistics I can do with pen and paper; the programming, I found very, very unhelpful and confusing. Eventually, I gave up on the course.

By Dimitra A

Jan 29, 2021

great course with good videos and examples. Very good course for learning the basic statistics. Unfortunately the week 3 is the most misunderstanding module, nevertheless very good and understanding

By h

Jan 14, 2017

Way too much videos and too little hands-on learning. Felt like the course mostly taught you to remember stuff, and not actually learning a skill, though I broke the course early.

By Alessandro F

Jan 26, 2017

great introduction to statistics with no prior knowledge required. Although in parts has been challenging, for me is the right degree of difficulty to push an individual to learning.

By Xavier S

Dec 4, 2018

I finished this course in around 3 weeks (instead of 8 because I needed to learn fast), it was dense but also a wonderful experience. Nice teachers, nice quizz, nice R-labs. Plenty of examples, easy to follow. I cannot give 5 stars because, unfortunately, there are some mistakes in few lectures and the questions in the quizz and R-lab are sometimes not thoroughly enough written, (clearly not written as do pure mathematicians), and consequently the answers will sometimes depends on your interpretation. In this case, (a little bit frustrating !), you just have to be patient and to try to understand how the teachers think.

However, I STRONGLY recommend this course that is increadibly pedagogical.

By Mark B

Oct 4, 2018

I'd like to brush up on stat without being forced to learn R. I've already invested quite of bit of my time and resources into learning Python.

By Ngoc D

Oct 24, 2017

Overall, I find this course really helpful for those who don't have much background in statistics. The lecturers and illustrators have done a very good job explaining hard concepts through fun examples. Some flaws I'd like to mention: The the discussion forum is not very hectic, and in some weeks, looks like an abandoned island. The course has not provided learners with sufficient materials, such as standard z-table, t-table, etc. Several concepts are not thoroughly explained (the P-value, for example), perhaps due to their toughness, so good articles with elaborate explanation on these concepts would be a great addition. And finally, while assignment questions are good and comprehensive in general, some of them need modification to avoid ambiguity (by adding information about whether they are considering one-tailed or two-tailed test or providing z-score used in the question, etc) for learners.

By Emilly M

Jan 8, 2016

Only the firs week of this course, but I can already tell that it's going to be incredibly useful to me. I've learned a lot and especially love the introduction to R through datacamp!

By Du F

Apr 22, 2019

非常完美~~~ 我爱了!!!敲稀饭这个组合 可萌可攻可 ... 这个basic statistics的课程 很稀饭很稀饭很稀饭

By N_ens

Sep 7, 2017

The first two weeks of this course are really good. I enjoy the format (switching between manual math equations and performing tasks in R). However after week three the course becomes hard to follow as the material feels too condensed and the instructor is not quite as clear. I would recommend taking some basics in Khan Academy before trying to attempt the full of this course.

By Charlotte D

Aug 19, 2017

I am a complete novice to inferential statistics, probability and R programming. The video lectures were clear enough, but they did not cover everything in the quizzes- quite a few mathematical leaps had to be made, so proceed with caution if mathematical dexterity is not your strong suit. The probability lectures were especially riddled with gaps and leaps in logic that I struggled to follow.

What is more, the R programming does not stick to the vocabulary and concepts presented in the video material. The R assignments are disjointed, unclear, and do not advance, nor compliment, the material.

By chengxiaoxue

Oct 13, 2017

I do not understand why the instructors cannot use simple, daily-life examples. Why should the invented islands, rocket be involved in their examples? For a person who has no idea about planes, we should try hard to understand something unnecessary ! Please do not just stay in the ivory tower! Think about real life.