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Coursera

Comments

  • #2
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Welcome to the Researcher forum keith16.

    Have not yet used Coursera. The content of the Data Analysis and Statistical Inference is relatively basic but appears useful. The online course, text materials, and statistical software are all free, which makes it attractive. If you have already had data analysis and statistics, it might serve as a good refresher.


  • #3
    keith16
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,061 ✭✭✭keith16


    Thanks Black Swan.

    I'm worried about how familiar I need to get with R beforehand.

    I did a module in statistics years ago in college. We used SPSS - not sure if that's similar to R in any way shape or form?


  • #4
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    I'm an SPSS user too. Have not used R. Might be a useful alternative, given that SPSS is very expensive for individual users without student, university, or other supported access providers. Just to experience R may justify the free course.


  • #5
    Ostrom
    Registered Users Posts: 3,483 ✭✭✭Ostrom


    keith16 wrote: »
    Thanks Black Swan.

    I'm worried about how familiar I need to get with R beforehand.

    I did a module in statistics years ago in college. We used SPSS - not sure if that's similar to R in any way shape or form?

    R is quite different. Dialog-based packages (menus and point-and-click selection) like SPSS are falling quickly out of use and being replaced with syntax based programmes. R is a bit unwieldy for a beginner, but pays off long term in ease of use, lack of license fees, easy replication of commands, and endless upgrading of the base package. Open source seems to be making inroads on old license packages like stata, sas, spss etc, so it would be good to have some grounding in the basics.


  • #6
    arodabomb
    Registered Users Posts: 256 ✭✭arodabomb


    I completed 3 coursera courses and started numerous. Its a brilliant facility but its really only as good as the content. I find it hard to gauge the level of the course until I actually start it (hence why I've started many and only finished 3, some of them end up being too much of a beginner course). There are some brilliant courses out there, some very basic courses that claim to be much more and some that are almost a pitch for certain universities.

    I can't comment on the above course, but https://www.coursera.org/course/compdata might be a good side course if you're struggling/starting with R.


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  • #7
    keith16
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,061 ✭✭✭keith16


    I started the course on Monday and I must say it's very engaging so far. Highly recommend it.


  • #8
    Ostrom
    Registered Users Posts: 3,483 ✭✭✭Ostrom


    Forgot about this - you might find it useful afterwards url]http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmm/learning/online-course/index.html[/url

    All exercises are provided for MLwiN, R, and Stata. Since the course you are taking gets you up to basic multiple regression, I think this would be an ideal follow-on, as it deals with a number of common procedures and models (i.e. things you may encounter in real-world modeling).


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