Coursera: Data Science Math Skills Review

Data Science Math Skills is a 4 week primer on math concepts that frequently appear in introductory data science courses offered by Duke University on the Coursera MOOC platform. The course is designed to get those without a strong math background or those in need of a refresher up to speed with the basic math concepts needed to be successful learning data science. Most of the concepts in this course are things that students would typically learn in high school or perhaps an introductory college math course, including: sets, summation notation, mean and variance, the Cartesian plane and functions, exponents, logarithms, the basics of derivatives and basic probability. There are no perquisites for this course. Grading is based upon periodic comprehension quizzes that allow unlimited attempts.


Most of the course content takes the form of tutorial style lectures where the professors write with colored pens on a black background and explain what they are doing with a voice-overs, similar to watching a math teacher write things out on a blackboard. The videos are very reminiscent of the math content available on on Khan Academy. Since the lectures don't use prepared slides, some of the content feels a little less polished than other Coursera courses, but working through problems in real time can be more illuminating than just talking over static slides. The professors generally do a good job explaining material although the course sometimes lacks a sense of progression and flow simply because it covers so many different topics that are often unrelated to one another. It is also likely that students will already know at least some of the topics covered; skipping lectures is easy enough but you still have to pass the quizzes if you want to complete the course and taking quizzes on topics you already know is not particularly useful.


Data Science Math Skills is a good course for those in need of a math refresher prior to learning about data science, but the material only really prepares students for the most basic data science courses. Many data science courses, even introductory ones, use linear algebra and other math concepts that are not covered in this course. That said, the course touches on about as many different topics as you could expect in 4 weeks and it doesn't get bogged down by tackling complex topics that would require an entire dedicated course to cover in appropriate detail.


I give Data Science Math Skills 3.75 out of 5 stars: Good.