The R Programming Environment is the first course in a 4-part R programming series offered by Roger Peng of John Hopkins University on Coursera. The original version of Peng's other introductory R course that is now a part of the John Hopkins Machine Learning specialization was my first exposure to R, so I figured I check out this new specialization since it seemed like it would teach R in more detail. The R Programming Environment is nothing more than a short, written introduction to R. It has no lecture content besides a couple of minute long orientation videos. What's more, all the assignments are locked unless you pay for the course. The written guides are too abbreviated to be suitable for complete programming beginners and too brief to be of much use to people with prior exposure to R. Students who already know to program in another language who want a quick R primer stand to benefit the most from this course. That said, why sign up for a MOOC at all if you are only getting a written guide without assignments? There are many places you can find better, more comprehensive written R guides that are more both more suitable for beginners and also cover more topics so as to be useful to people who might know some R already.
I give The R Programming Environment 1.5 out of 5 stars: Lacking.
If you're interested in a written R guide suitable for complete beginners but that eventually gets into topics like statistical testing and predictive modeling, check out my 30-part intro to R series.
Agree. I payed for the course. Short intro video. All other is reading material presented on a webpage. The worst part is the swirl exercise. You can't interrupt the lessons because you lose all the points you have already received. 0 starts of 5. Will ask for a refund.
ReplyDeleteI just checked out the second course in the specialization and it's the same thing. One video and then a bunch of written guides.
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