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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Combinatorics and Probability by University of California San Diego

4.6
stars
835 ratings

About the Course

Counting is one of the basic mathematically related tasks we encounter on a day to day basis. The main question here is the following. If we need to count something, can we do anything better than just counting all objects one by one? Do we need to create a list of all phone numbers to ensure that there are enough phone numbers for everyone? Is there a way to tell that our algorithm will run in a reasonable time before implementing and actually running it? All these questions are addressed by a mathematical field called Combinatorics. In this online course we discuss most standard combinatorial settings that can help to answer questions of this type. We will especially concentrate on developing the ability to distinguish these settings in real life and algorithmic problems. This will help the learner to actually implement new knowledge. Apart from that we will discuss recursive technique for counting that is important for algorithmic implementations. One of the main ‘consumers’ of Combinatorics is Probability Theory. This area is connected with numerous sides of life, on one hand being an important concept in everyday life and on the other hand being an indispensable tool in such modern and important fields as Statistics and Machine Learning. In this course we will concentrate on providing the working knowledge of basics of probability and a good intuition in this area. The practice shows that such an intuition is not easy to develop. In the end of the course we will create a program that successfully plays a tricky and very counterintuitive dice game. 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

SP

Feb 26, 2021

Special thanks to Prof. Vladimir Podolskii and Prof. Alexander S. Kulikov for their amazing explanations and diligent visuals of the concepts as well as problem sets. You Rock!

JM

Sep 8, 2020

It's a perfect introduction to combinatorics and probability, short, fun, and easy to understand. I would like to see more puzzles, those are extremely fun and interesting

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151 - 175 of 185 Reviews for Combinatorics and Probability

By Umakant V

Jan 23, 2020

This course provided me with new ways to confront the problems of combinatorics. I am very grateful to the faculty for their content and coursera for giving me financial aid.

By Bufford B

Jul 31, 2023

Pretty interesting concepts. But not always well presented, and it has several cases where they did not have a native English speaker proof the material.

By Juan P Y

Mar 1, 2018

Awesome course, good topics. Easy to get help. Some topics weren't that clear at first, but you'll eventually understand.

By Ilan V

May 6, 2023

its great that you did all the quizzes. It made me focus and return to materials I didn't understand till the end.

By Abhishek K

May 31, 2021

I really liked the course. Most of the concepts were explained lucidly. The final assignment was enjoyable.

By Malik T

Feb 18, 2020

In this course, the use of language is a huge obstacle for students to understand the teachers clearly.

By giannisvasilakopoulos

Jan 31, 2021

Very good course. I learned a lot of things although I think it would be better to have more examples.

By Rishabh A

May 10, 2020

The course had amazing content and everything except the probability had a top-notch explanation.

By John W

Jul 30, 2021

Make sure to refresh and resubmit final project to judge whether program is working correctly

By Ajit B

Oct 19, 2017

I think the level could have been a bit more advanced. Overall a good course though.

By Mahade H

Aug 28, 2020

English was not that much of good, but the contents were awesome. Learned so much.

By Abhinav M

Jun 4, 2020

Probability courses could have been more structured and more about definitions

By Афанасьев И В

Oct 26, 2020

Для новичков в теорвере на 4, чисто база которую нужно дальше развивать

By Nikhil Y

May 1, 2020

it was really amazing to work on this course!!

By Jinqiang Z

Dec 16, 2017

it's good in general. But slightly too simple.

By Elton O

May 5, 2018

The probability section could be more visual.

By Saurabh P

May 27, 2020

Great course with lots of exercises.

By Michael K

Jan 21, 2019

Prof Vlad has really great examples!

By Ramesh

Dec 9, 2017

Probability section was little weak

By Lionel L R Q

Jun 24, 2020

The last assignment is fun :)

By Manoj B

Jul 28, 2020

It was very good

By Lakshman P

Oct 29, 2020

Awesome course

By Anh T

Nov 25, 2021

The course offers solid materials, but is lacking in examples and exercises. Some of the exercises were tough but interesting and help to reinforce the knowledge learned. Week 4 was the weakest so far for me, the exercises have no explanation or feedback whatsoever, you don't know why you were right or wrong. The final project was challenging and fun but I don't think it has a lot to do with probability, only combinatorics. Overall a decent course.

By Tarun M

May 20, 2019

This course really brought the best out of me in terms of logical programming. The last task needed hours of hard work, but was a fun challenge. However, I felt that the instructors could have been a bit more responsive on the forums to help us clear our doubts.

By Amy G

Apr 6, 2020

Learning content was too easy - covers things from high school algebra. The instructions for the final project also don't indicate that you have to redefine all previous functions in each code block for the code to be graded correctly.