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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Statistics & Data Analysis in Public Health by Imperial College London

4.7
stars
1,413 ratings

About the Course

Welcome to Introduction to Statistics & Data Analysis in Public Health! This course will teach you the core building blocks of statistical analysis - types of variables, common distributions, hypothesis testing - but, more than that, it will enable you to take a data set you've never seen before, describe its keys features, get to know its strengths and quirks, run some vital basic analyses and then formulate and test hypotheses based on means and proportions. You'll then have a solid grounding to move on to more sophisticated analysis and take the other courses in the series. You'll learn the popular, flexible and completely free software R, used by statistics and machine learning practitioners everywhere. It's hands-on, so you'll first learn about how to phrase a testable hypothesis via examples of medical research as reported by the media. Then you'll work through a data set on fruit and vegetable eating habits: data that are realistically messy, because that's what public health data sets are like in reality. There will be mini-quizzes with feedback along the way to check your understanding. The course will sharpen your ability to think critically and not take things for granted: in this age of uncontrolled algorithms and fake news, these skills are more important than ever. Prerequisites Some formulae are given to aid understanding, but this is not one of those courses where you need a mathematics degree to follow it. You will need only basic numeracy (for example, we will not use calculus) and familiarity with graphical and tabular ways of presenting results. No knowledge of R or programming is assumed....

Top reviews

SK

Oct 11, 2019

This is the best course among all I've taken..

The instructor has presented the content precisely.

I highly recommend to those who are looking to explore R in the field of health

LA

May 25, 2019

Was a very nicely done and clear course to build or re-build foundation for most common statistical concepts and an intro to using R via R-Studio for your work with them on the basics.

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26 - 50 of 276 Reviews for Introduction to Statistics & Data Analysis in Public Health

By Jose L V V

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Aug 30, 2019

the course is very good both in theory and practice with programming in R to public health

By Usman A

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Apr 7, 2019

Superb course. I will recommend to all Public Health Practitioners.

By Tusharindra L

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May 24, 2020

The 4th week of the course was completed mostly in the form of reading notes which were honestly torturous. Everything else was really good. Cheers!

By CHRISTOS D

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Feb 28, 2019

more time needed to reiew R

By Jiracha J

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Aug 3, 2019

good, but hard sometimes

By Mennatalla N S

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Apr 10, 2020

The formulae did not work on my laptop and could not solve this problem and could not contact the instructors. The instructor way of illustration is simple and nice so I would prefer more videos than the too much readings in the last week .

By Hassan c

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Nov 15, 2021

I came from a background of medical science. I have grip over basic concepts of Statistics as well as some stat softwares for inferential stats. What I lacked was programming background. I wanted to learn R but was always afraid of R. This course made it all seem so easy and enjoyable that I learned it all in less than a month.

I have taken some other courses on Coursera, on Udemy too but all seemed too distant from what I required, ie R from biostat perspective and from scratch. This course provides you exactly. I liked this course so much that I have taken other specializations from Imperial as well and it made me interested in Imperial's MPH as well.

Thank you all the instructors, Dr.Bottle and the team for designing such an amazing coursework in such a way that it motivates you itself to reach higher and make another milestone. And for making such a difficult coursework so much easier for a person from non-mathematical background, And thank you coursera for bringing all of this to us. I remain indebted to all of you for granting me this skill.

By Aedrian A

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Jan 22, 2021

This is a comprehensive and well-made overview of statistical principles and techniques (1) in the context of public health and (2) that will be useful in the subsequent courses in the Coursera Specialization where it belongs. While there are a lot of similar MOOC offerings around, the public health examples and the unique approach this course provides make it worth taking especially if you are the type of person who wants to "cover all bases." This is highly recommended for those aiming to have a career in public health-related research or even those casual learners who want to make sense of the data that they see and hear from the news.

By Peter B

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Oct 4, 2020

I felt this course gave a good introduction to using R for statistical testing and benefited from doing so using health data. My main aim was to learn R but I felt a course that just concentrated on the programming aspects would not suit me. I think this course is good for those new to R who might not have experience in other programming languages. The videos and the lectures were well put together and the quizzes seemed well designed to pick up misconceptions or common mistakes. I would recommend this course

By Anthony B

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Sep 22, 2020

Until 2016, I was building Financial and Accounting Models for MBA Programmes. That I was teaching as an MBA Dissertations Supervisor, and Senior University Business School Lecturer (Professor). I am now working Part Time for the NHS, and I am aiming to specialise as a Senior Data Scientist with the NHS. This is Specialisation, is one of several first class steps that one can take towards such an aim.

By Brenda Y

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Jun 29, 2020

I was so apprehensive about starting this course because I associated R with programming (that I very much dislike) but it has been very fascinating and I've learned so many useful things like creating histograms and doing hypothesis testing in R! It's certainly not as scary/difficult as I thought, and I'm looking foward to the next few courses!

By hippo d

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May 2, 2021

To see others how to teach statistics in medicine and health is a good thing for an old man. I learn a lot from this teacher how to introduce these things clearly within several sessions of short minutes to other people. Many professional people cannot teach other kids about these terms after MANY HOURS in school and hospital.

By Saba A

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Aug 9, 2020

This course is well designed for beginners. Everyone who wanted to learn the basics of sampling, statistical analysis (mean, mode, proportion, p-value, degree of freedom and many more) must take this course. Especially if anyone wanted to learn R and do not have a background of statistics then this is the best course.

By Mahamed A

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Aug 29, 2023

very fantastic subject with full of joy and delight. I think the potential and know how invested on the subject is not denying and I progressively have a joy and interesting demand on all statistics related subject matter. Thanks to the professor who is always here and there to learn in life time career development.

By Brittany R

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Jun 18, 2020

This was an excellent course! I have a MPH degree and I took this course as a refresher on statistical concepts but also to begin learning R. The professor was great and the examples really started to reinforce concepts within R. Overall, I found this course to be very informative and useful for my day to day work.

By Dr K K

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Jul 12, 2020

Good session, clear content, good flow, excellent assignments and practice sessions

Only in one place, tables of assignment for chi square test, total mistake was there. In one quiz, mean value of 11 and 14 samples were not accepted as correct. The reason behind this is not explained. As a whole, excellent course.

By Roxana P

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Nov 22, 2020

This is a very well explained course which explains with short videos, readings, stories very important and somewhat basic aspects of statistics in public health field. I definitely recommend this one even if you already have knowledge, as it forces you to deepen the critical thinking as (future) statistician.

By Sakshi N

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Aug 12, 2020

I wasn't confident of myself in using R. It always seemed to me that IT professional are better equipped to learn it. By confidence has increased to a great extent and I am happy to say that I will be completing this specialization by Imperial College London.

Thanks Coursera and Imperial College Team :)

By Miao G

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Jan 11, 2022

This is an excellent introduction course to someone with no Statistical background. Course material are practical and straightforward to follow, the professor used simple examples to illustrate important concepts. I enjoyed very much practising with R which I never thought i could manage it.

By Michael O

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Jun 27, 2020

If you want to really understand statistics for data analysis, this course is a great idea. The professor, Dr. Bottle actually did a great job on the contents of this course. I had a statistical background, and this course helps me to understand some concepts that I didn't understand before.

By Faride U F

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Feb 28, 2022

un muy buen curso para tener una introducción en lo que significa realizar procesos de investigación. El instructor es muy bueno explicando y además lo hace muy ameno ya que de repente incluye muchos chistes o elementos graciosos que facilitan las lecturas o ejercicios. 10/10 recomiendo.

By Gianni B

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Jul 11, 2020

This introductory statistics course is far better than the similar one I took with Johns Hopkins University because there are fewer recorded lectures and more work involving reading. it is also broken down into smaller "chunks" and Alex Bottle is very engaging in his lectures.

By Tarif T K

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May 16, 2020

Excellent course! I must say that I have genuinely learned a lot about medical research using statistical tools from this course. And there were many concepts of statistics that that weren't clear to me. This course helped me understand those concepts as well.

By Maria F

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Dec 12, 2020

This is the best statistics course I have ever taken (and I have taken many!). The professor clearly explains all the concepts reviewed in this course and the exercises are designed in such a way to make it easy to understand the nuances of the theory.

By Elisabeth P

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Feb 3, 2021

Very good course for being introduced to statistical thinking. For someone with some background a little bit too easy and to less depth. But I think that's coming in the next courses within this series. More practical R skills should be emphasised.