Kursteilnehmer-Bewertung und -Feedback für Data-driven Astronomy von The University of Sydney

So far, the first week has been interesting. Challenging because I am new to Python (I am a C/C++, Swift and ABAP developer) . The assignments are well guided - challenging but far from impossible.

I would like the videos to be a little longer or give a little more theoretical background but mostly it has the right amount of info.

This course lies in the confluence of both my professional experience (software development in the IT industry) and the science that interests me the most: astronomy and astrophysics. Just a glance at the syllabus was enough to convince me that the course would be worth taking, due to its good structure and wide scope, covering current trends in both data science and computational astronomy.

From previous online course experience in these areas, I knew at the beginning that contents can be hard to grasp if the theory and practice are not well balanced, but it turned out to be a great run, with enough depth to pique one's interest while at the same time feeling comfortable using both past and newly acquired knowledge.

The course sports an excellent tool to solve and test the programming assignments that constitute most of the grades you will earn. Thanks to it, you will be freed, as a student, from the most common hassles in online courses involving coding (mainly environment setup). Which means more chances to focus on the main subjects covered and a pleasant wading through the challenges posed.

Beware that if you are already comfortable ín the programming language used (Python), you may easily be craving for more advanced assignments, but this I'm sure is easy to request from the helpful professors and staff. If you are instead a novice with regards to coding, additional parallel effort may be required, but the course contents will guide you well in the endeavor.

One aspect of the course that may be specially challenging is the relatively speedy run through the theory and concepts of Machine Learning. A myriad other online courses on the subject exist already; the course focusses instead more on the application of the techniques and nicely shows real world (or more appropriately, universe :-) ) applications which will help cementing the theories behind. I would expect that if you have not had previous contact with the subject, the contents can feel a bit daunting. But with some extra commitment (check the numerous online resources, take a parallel course...) I am pretty sure this can be overcome.

great course with practical python programming. very informative and easy to follow

Good course, with fun examples to work with. I'm not an astronomer, and mainly took the course for fun,but the things I've learned here will be useful for my own research. About the only thing I would have liked to see was more background material on each topic.

A good introduction in Data Astronomy with Python. I missed some lessons about python to finish some of the volunteer exercises and some contact with astronomy data from the web, but it is a great course.

I thought this class was a great application of Python Programming to an interesting topic that I otherwise would not have learned. However, coming from a computer science background, the programming was pretty easy. If you are looking to strictly learn more about programming, I would suggest a more difficult course.

Great and quick way to learn things. Thanks for the troubles taken to put this together. Some of the computational exercises could do with a little more clarity of language. But, overall, Great!

Interesting introduction to machine-learning techniques applied to astronomical data. I think very adapted to astronomers willing to learn about this topic or to astronomy students.

Nice introduction to machine learning using an interesting topic.

Great Learning

I enjoyed the course.

The only issue was with a couple of the python labs not having the data to try within my own environment.

A really good course covering a variety of subjects in both astronomy and data analysis which is exactly the combination I was looking for. A final exercise covering all the topics taught would have been a fitting end to the course.

If you want to learn Python and a bit of Machine Learning in the context of Astronomy then this is a great course to give your skills a boost and learn more about modern Astronomy.

A decent introductory course. The weeks follow themes and are not indicative of a suggested timeline.

Sorry, but this course was one of the weakest I have followed.