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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Graph Theory by University of California San Diego

4.5
stars
961 ratings

About the Course

We invite you to a fascinating journey into Graph Theory — an area which connects the elegance of painting and the rigor of mathematics; is simple, but not unsophisticated. Graph Theory gives us, both an easy way to pictorially represent many major mathematical results, and insights into the deep theories behind them. In this online course, among other intriguing applications, we will see how GPS systems find shortest routes, how engineers design integrated circuits, how biologists assemble genomes, why a political map can always be colored using a few colors. We will study Ramsey Theory which proves that in a large system, complete disorder is impossible! By the end of the course, we will implement an algorithm which finds an optimal assignment of students to schools. This algorithm, developed by David Gale and Lloyd S. Shapley, was later recognized by the conferral of Nobel Prize in Economics. As prerequisites we assume only basic math (e.g., we expect you to know what is a square or how to add fractions), basic programming in python (functions, loops, recursion), common sense and curiosity. Our intended audience are all people that work or plan to work in IT, starting from motivated high school students....

Top reviews

SU

Feb 27, 2019

Appreciate the structure and the explanations with examples. The practice tool before every lesson not makes it fun to learn but also sets the student in the context and can anticipate the concept.

RH

Nov 16, 2017

Was pretty fun and gave a good intro to graph theory. Definitely felt inspired to go deeper and understood the most basic proof ideas. The later lectures can spike in difficulty though. Very nice!

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176 - 200 of 214 Reviews for Introduction to Graph Theory

By 121910305010 P S K

Jan 16, 2021

good

By Deleted A

Jan 12, 2021

nice

By BAINA R R

Jan 10, 2021

good

By 121910316019 C G S

Jan 9, 2021

good

By Trần C L

Nov 8, 2019

Too much boring stuff, somewhat poor lecturing, I must say. I only took in a little what I've just learned.

However, 3rd party puzzle is fun and quizzes are ok, new good thing is glossary which reviews the module's contents. These are things that got me understand about graph honestly.

I like the old teacher's lessons, he has many interactive quizzes on it and he seems passionated, others should do it too, it keep my concentration from falling apart.

This course keeps what's good from previous courses, but you guy still messed up the teaching.

By Ethan H

Oct 26, 2020

Not the best MOOC for graph theory, but it got the job done. This might just be my preference as a student, but I find Alexander Shen's lecture style very confusing, and often inaudible. For these sections (e.g. Ford & Fulkerson), I simply watched OCW lectures from MIT. The exercises for the course are a bit on the easy side, and didn't require learning anything beyond definitions (an an occasional theorem). Although I did not use online forums, I appreciate that the instructors are very responsive to questions and concerns. Thanks!

By Yang L

Oct 23, 2019

It is overall a good course. The week 5 part is super confusing. In that lecture, a lot of terminologies are mixing together without proper explain. Like the "cut", it would be nice to explain it is a minimal cut at first place, otherwise one would not know why that specific cut can tell the maximum flow while other cut can't. It will be better to have a clear lecture with more diagram or animation. It's very hard to follow when there only few words on the slides and the lecturer don't follow the slides... .

By Anh T

Feb 8, 2022

The course is informative at the basic level but has some drawbacks.

- The first week were very laden with knowledge and concepts that are repeated in later weeks anyway

- The exercises were easy, there were no advanced challenge to strengthen one's understanding of the theories learned.

- The last week was a major spike in difficulty and the explanations were not very clear.

Overall a good enough course for a beginner, but it could do with more exercises.

By Vanya B

Aug 19, 2019

The course content was very good and I found the notebook exercises extremely useful in visualizing the problems. However, I found the instructors extremely boring and the explanations they provide for some of the proofs are very vague and not very engaging. I had to watch youtube videos on the same topic to understand the concepts more clearly. The quizzes were very easy sometimes but good enough for a beginner to graph theory.

By Shamah M Z

Jun 13, 2020

The course allowed learning the relevant topics of the subject, but the topic of Network graphs and the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm should be revised. An example or two of how the algorithm works could do marvel. Also, the concept of the said topics should be better described with the help of appropriate diagrams and simulations. Other than that, the course was really amazing. Thank you, professors!

By Luis M V F

Jan 7, 2020

This course is better compared to the previous two courses. I can state that I liked the first 4 weeks, but week 5 is terrible. I enjoyed implementing the coding assignment, but I would definitely suggest not taking this course because is not really a good course for Discrete Math.

By yk

Apr 20, 2020

I enjoyed the course up til week 4. Week 5 was just a complete mess with incomprehensible explanations to...well I couldn't even figure out what he was trying to explain. I don't understand why they decided to change the instructor for the final week.

By Alex Y

Jan 10, 2019

Some explanations could be more detailed. The course jumps over important theorems too fast, so there may not be enough time to internalize knowledge for some. If one wants to understand basics of Graph Theory well, external readings may be required.

By M. A

Jul 30, 2020

This course does not cover discussion regarding graph representation using the adjacency matrix. Although there some discussions about graph algorithms, these algorithms are presented using Jupyter and not constructed from scratch in Python.

By Rajiv D

Apr 13, 2022

The course is ok. I believe the course could improve as an example the prooves of theorems could have been more detailed. Other than that it was okay as a first introduction to graph theory.

By Kijin K

Jan 23, 2019

I don't like one lecturer among faculty of it because of sloppy preparation and stuttering . But other lecture material was good like other courses in this specialization.

By Andrés H Z (

Dec 2, 2019

Overall good course, but in the last week, the quality dropped significantly. Explanations were not understandable and not convincing at all during that week

By Chris N

Mar 14, 2021

Instructor's English is a bit hard to understand. Especially week5 instructor stammers too much. I really had hard time to follow the course because of it.

By Arjun B

Jun 25, 2019

I would personally liked only one instructor to take the entire course but this method of a number of instructors in also nice

Overall a good course

By CHAN C K

Jun 11, 2020

Good course. The lectures for Week 2 and Week 5 are not well delivered. The wordings used are ambiguous. Kindly improve on the usage of language.

By Matt D

Jan 12, 2022

The language barrier proved quite challenging on some of the lessons. I had to consult some other youtube videos to follow along.

By Ankit Y

Jul 25, 2020

Topics are poorly explained and the worst part it becomes havoc at the end when the participant has already invested his time.

By Yao Y

Mar 5, 2022

The content is great, but the strong accent from some of the instructors makes the content hard to understand sometimes.

By 任洁

Aug 29, 2019

The explanations in the last week are very vague and difficult to understand.

By Константин К

Dec 14, 2017

useful and interesting information, good structure, but poor delivery