Loved the first part of the course where they introduced many relevant evaluation metrics (root mean square, Spearman, ROC, Precision/Recall, .etc). However, offline/online evaluations were vaguely explained and lacked depth. I really wish there were more concrete, written examples. The final quiz was abstract, weird, and difficult to understand.

That last assignment is great for a better understanding of the metrics.

If you are new to Recommender Systems evaluation, and would like to first know why we do what we do in evaluating a recommender system, go for this course! Each and every approach is explained in vivid details, stripped to the bare essentials so you can see the skeleton of that approach! The only shortcoming, in my opinion was that i felt the codes in honours content in Lenskit could've been further explained. But, all in all, a wonderful place to start!

Confused about some metrics.

not an easy course, specifically the honors track. the information is good, but not presented as well as in the previous two courses. Also there are errors in the honors assignment that make it unnecessarily difficult and you spend a lot of time on irrelevant things.

The computer assignment is lack of explanation.

I was working on a cross-domain recommendation system where i would recommend books to a user whose movie ratings have been given. I made the algorithm but didn't have any idea as to how to evaluate it but this course helped me through. Thanks

the part of offline evaluation is really good and practical as well. However, although knowing online evaluation is a more complex subject, I felt it lacked a little bit how to put all this knowledge in practice.

It is not perfect but best of specialisation so far. It is a little bit philosophical rather than technical and formal, but it was exactly meet my current personal needs. Can not be recommended as a first and only introduction to a topic of an evaluation and metrics of recommender systems.

P.S. Exercises and quizzes, both main and honour, are somewhat eccentric.

My issues about the previous courses in this specialization seem to have been addressed in this one. The assignment in the end is a real good one. The creators of this course have done well to evolve a really thought-provoking and relevant assignment. The course itself helps one develop the appropriate thought process, which comes in handy while deciding upon a metric for a problem at hand.