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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Predictive Modeling and Analytics by University of Colorado Boulder

3.6
stars
590 ratings

About the Course

Welcome to the second course in the Data Analytics for Business specialization! This course will introduce you to some of the most widely used predictive modeling techniques and their core principles. By taking this course, you will form a solid foundation of predictive analytics, which refers to tools and techniques for building statistical or machine learning models to make predictions based on data. You will learn how to carry out exploratory data analysis to gain insights and prepare data for predictive modeling, an essential skill valued in the business. You’ll also learn how to summarize and visualize datasets using plots so that you can present your results in a compelling and meaningful way. We will use a practical predictive modeling software, XLMiner, which is a popular Excel plug-in. This course is designed for anyone who is interested in using data to gain insights and make better business decisions. The techniques discussed are applied in all functional areas within business organizations including accounting, finance, human resource management, marketing, operations, and strategic planning. The expected prerequisites for this course include a prior working knowledge of Excel, introductory level algebra, and basic statistics....

Top reviews

TN

Apr 14, 2020

Good course to give a basic understanding of predictive modelling and analytics. Good assignments and opportunity to review peer submissions help reinforce the learnings.

HA

Nov 19, 2017

this course teach you about the technical of using tools for predictive modeling. very useful for you who want to learn the fundamental of analytics.

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26 - 50 of 213 Reviews for Predictive Modeling and Analytics

By Evans L E M

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Nov 12, 2020

The final assignment really destroyed my confidence. Things that we're thought to do, were sometimes not required in the assignment - leading to confusion and incorrect outputs. Sometimes I had to use other modelling plugins for Excel to get the correct results.

Also, you really must use the paid version of XLMiner if you intend to get full score in the finals.

By Federico G V

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Aug 15, 2019

The course is very stimulating, unfortunately (at least for a non native english speaker) the understanding of the professor's words is tough

By Jabin M J

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May 19, 2021

Content is really good and the interactive interference is really awesome

Instructor Audio was blurry at times and hard to understand

By Sandeep K

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Nov 7, 2016

There was some amount of confusion in the Quizzes and we didnt get moderation. Some more discussion in forums should be encouraged.

By Deleted A

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Jul 11, 2019

The instructor runs very fast. He is in a hurry to catch his train. Does not explain the topics properly.

By Mark S H

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Mar 16, 2021

I can follow the instructor even at 1.5x speed so I cannot complain like others do. But there are quite a few things that are too annoying to accept. First: The XLMiner-Tool might be a good idea but does not exist in the version used in recording (2014/15). Second: I choose not to install the current addon offered by the XLMiner Company solver.com because my antivirus alerted me multiple times. I do not care if these warnings are justified or not but this is a no go. Third Issue: even if your are trying to bypass XL-Miner with R or Python (which are not part of the program) in Week 3 and 4 you will run into unclear question in the application assignments. Fourth issue: due to the bad user experience, the time spend enlarges unnecessarily.

I have tried it as part of Coursera Plus an UC Boulders good reputation as an entry to the field her on coursera but am mostly disappointed. As of yet (Week 4) I am not sure if I really want to put any more time into it and will most likely switch to another course.

By Thomas F

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Nov 11, 2020

Unfortunately I was not very happy with this course. The teacher's accent was very hard to understand most of the time. Furthermore, he was talking very fast, which was causing me to constantly pause and rewind, in order to apprehend what he was saying. I had to go 2-3 times through a course to catch everything in the lecture. Also, it is terrible that you have to rely on a paid software if you want to complete the course (it is given to you on a 15day trial and/or a heave discount, but still..).

By Dario A

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Feb 13, 2018

The instructor's poor English makes it difficult to follow the lectures and it takes twice the time to study the transcript, which is also wrong at times. The homework was a rehash of the same basic teaching with no practical application. What good is to know the coefficient or the slope of a regression when no prediction exercises are done to find a data point that is not close to the existing data points?

XLMiner does not work online and for Mac users this was very cumbersome.

By Tony H

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Feb 28, 2018

This course doesn't do a good job of helping you learn the "why" behind the concepts. I felt like a lot of difficult concepts were thrown at me with insufficient context. It's been tough trying to internalize meaningful mental models through the course content.

By X Z

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Jun 3, 2019

The content is useful. The lecturer is very good at organizing the course structure. However, he is a bad teacher. He reads subtitles instead of "talking". I hope he could elaborate key points and relate concepts to real life examples.

By sura H

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Dec 10, 2021

i didn't understand the lecturer very well due to his course explanation way, adding to this i had so many problems with the included Xlminer license which forced me to Buy it on my own budget.

By Catalina S

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Jul 19, 2021

It assumes course takers have knowledge on statistics and probabilistic. Explains too fast, and at the end is not clear the use of each technique

By Fabio F

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Mar 9, 2018

content is fine. but light on BUSINESS applications. Professor's english very hard to follow.

By Mithun M

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Jun 24, 2017

The instructor is really fast and he needs to slow down with better illustration.

By Cam E

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Jun 1, 2021

Very difficult to follow. Most videos are one, long, run on sentance.

By Wallace O

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Jul 11, 2017

Terms weren't very clear, and many videos had not txt file.

By Kevin S

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May 24, 2018

Hard to follow seamlessly with poor pronunciation.

By Alan D P

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Jul 17, 2020

This was quite a theoretical course to a certain extent - not as practical as the other courses in the Specialization. I don't think that this is material that I would envision me using normally in my work, but I can see where it might be useful.

The lecturer was hard to understand a lot of the time. He went past some important points at light speed and it was very hard to pick up certain concepts. Hard to take it in at times.

Repeating what others have said - I really didn't like having to use a specific software package rather than a generic package. XLminer can be obtained on a 14 day trial, however the course is intended to be 4 weeks long, so either do the course faster (like I did) or pay for a package that you will most likely never use again. The course is, to a large extent, a tutorial on XLminer and it's fair to say that most people that do this course will never use it again.

This course could do with a re-vamp.

By Udita T

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Jun 14, 2022

I am sorry to say this is the worst course I have taken on Coursera:

1. The course was recorded in 2015/2016 and the XLMiner add-in for Excel has been updated, it is no longer called XLMiner.

2. The course content is superficial - there are just approximately 30 minutes of video for each module. No concepts are explained, instead just number crunching is taught.

3. No answers to quizzes are provided so one doesn't know what the correct answer should have been. This does not make for effective teaching and learning.

4. The instructor speaks too fast and reads from a script. Again a huge problem when trying to follow his videos.

If this wasn't a required course in the Advanced Business Analytics Specialization I would have dropped this course. As it is, this course took me forever to finish as it made for some extremely frustrating moments.

Please do something!!!

By Jessica B

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Nov 2, 2016

This course starts very simply with data clean up (almost too simply!), but then goes DEEP into the weeds of regression and fails to explain how to apply these complex concepts to any real world application. For example, if I build a regression model, how might I use it in my analytics role at work and explain the results to my stakeholders? How do i interpret the results of the regression for making informed business decisions? How do I predict an outcome with a Tree or Neural Network? I found the instructor very hard to follow/understand (thank goodness for the written transcripts). He's clearly extremely intelligent, but fails to relate these concepts to the student in order for the student to take away anything more than "These complex concepts and tools exist."

By Diego F P P

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Aug 6, 2020

Useless course. All the learning process depends of XLMiner, a paid addon that just is available for 15 days. This course assumes that the person is expert in statistics and doesn't give a feedback and answers of the quizzes don't correspond to what the models and software generates and results necessary to find out the answers in the forums. Very dissapointed of this waste-of-time course.

By Kathryn W

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Sep 4, 2020

Course is mainly a push to use a tool which is not free and an add-on to Excel. It would have been more useful to either use straight Excel or go to something like Python or SQL instead of adding another cost onto the course. They should have been more upfront that this course requires a paid extension for Excel or just provided the tool to the students enrolled.

By Davi F L M

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Oct 21, 2020

course is poor, there is no sense in 2020 turn a course available that use a software like XLMINER that is not open source. Professor speeks too fast, even if you are a native speaker will surf dificulteis to understand. Exercises are lost in the content of the week, I did the exercises without understand why I was doing that.

By MK B

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Feb 26, 2017

This course is not well moderated, the material is confusing, and the quizzes were not tested before uploading them onto Coursera. This specialization is definitely not on par with other specializations I have done.

BLUF: There are better uses for your money and time.

By Deleted A

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Sep 29, 2017

poor instructor (too strong of an accent, no skills in talking with a teleprompter or generally putting life into what he says), material could be strongly improved, problems with assignments but no help in the forums