Learner Reviews & Feedback for Mathematical Thinking in Computer Science by University of California San Diego

no clarity and continuity in expressing the ideas too difficult to follow

The course is full of interesting puzzles, making it a fun course to complete. However, there is very little explanation as to why you are solving these puzzles and what you are supposed to learn from them. The course might be meant as a complement to following a university course, and might help better understand concepts learned in class. But as a standalone course it feels lacking.

The teacher Alexander Chen doesn't explain anything well. It's horrible to understand him and what he wants.

I am just into week 1 but the explanations given are unclear and confusing. The didactic is poor. I am right now wondering whether I should continue learning this or not

While the material itself is important and very useful in general, the course, unfortunately, doesn't have enough practical material to help students to internalise it.

Decent material but a lot of the assignments were vague.

I also didn't realize that we'd specifically be using Python, wish that were more clear day one. I was under the impression it was more for people that generally knew how to program, not that we'd have to use Python to submit assignments - my Python skills are rusty.

Some explanation are unclear or confusing.

Quite chaotic and disarranged course (in both complexity and structure) although contains interesting topics. Possibly because of its introductory goal.

What a waste of time.

The content is great but the presentation/clarification is awful!!!

Good course to gain knowledge of mathematics, Worth for everyone not only computer science

nice course

Broken English and an inflated $79 to take practice tests, but the professor is knowledgeable and makes proofs fun.

very very fun way to understand simple things

The last one was a little bit hard, still couldn't write the code for the 15 puzzle game. Did it just by intuitive trial error

Great course with variety of different mathematical puzzles.

Two things can be improved:

1) It's not always obvious which global subject is discussed during the week and what is a connection with puzzles, some kind of review video at start of each week will be helpful.

2) Sometimes explanations not clear at all. I did watched some videos 2-3 times before completely understand what is going on. It will be great to have a rigours proof of theorems as supplementary reading material.

This course mostly consists of a set of loosely related under the umbrella of discrete mathematics. A lot of the exercises take the form of puzzles where you either have to solve the puzzle or determine whether a solution is impossible. The puzzles are fun and make for good brain exercise; however, I'm not sure if all of this has made me a better programmer. It's worth noting that most Computer Science degrees will require some form of discrete math coursework, so if you're considering CS and are worried about the math requirements, this Specialization would be good to try out.

Some of the explanations of concepts was just not clear and there were many verbal errors and some really odd editing in many of the videos. Overall the quality of this course is so so.

I liked the course, and I enjoyed the math for sure. BUT, I think there were some sections that could have been explained more thoroughly and perhaps some videos that could have been shot again to be more clear. But whatever, I am very grateful to be able to learn this here :)

Mostly felt like a series of parlour tricks with little insight into underlying mathematical principles

course is poorly explained. such a bad course.

The course is taught by 3 instructors. This makes the experience strikingly unbalanced. The style of course delivery and explanation is very poor with one of the instructors, the one who took Week 1 and 6. The rest of the weeks were OK. The other two instructors were clear with their arguments. This course has a very different approach (do-it-yourself-before-expalnation-by-instructors), although it was mentioned clearly on the Course Info page. If you can make out yourself what strategy to apply for the interactive puzzles, then you are doing good. Otherwise, the puzzles will just be trial-and-error games for you. The instructors were kind enough to answer on the Discussion Forum, but do not expect much activity from your fellow learners as there might be very few people taking this course with you.

I was very disappointed in the first week in this course. It expects you to know the material and think like a mathematician to take the very first lessons.

Nice course little python programming and very good resources. clear teaching and explanation for theories and it's proofs

The course is excellent and most stuff is being taught in a nicely presented way. The main disappointment is 15-puzzle, because it's too difficult to understand without proper material.