Week 1 of The Operations Analytics course is incredibly underwhelming. I've noted a very heavy focus on basic concepts such as calculating averages, how to calculate a ratio, how to add colours to an excel graph, which was covered half a dozen separate times IN DETAIL. I honestly couldn't tell if the material had been intentionally under-developed to minimize professor effort or simply due to an inability to recognize the required content for the course. In any case, the fact that basic concepts are routinely repeated without further development or context is an indictment on the quality of the course.The entire first week comes off as very unpolished - it's clear that the speaker is reading off slides rather than drawing from memory and that the speech is almost spontaneous - back to back explanations of the exact same thing as if the speaker forgot what was supposed to come next. It's a recorded lecture... I don't understand how you can watch the Week 1 videos and think that's an acceptable level of quality. Moreover, 10 - 20% of each talk is simply a summary of what's been discussed and will be discussed. On quiz week 1 there was an actual question where all you had to do was input a value for X then add one number and that's the answer? That's literally not even high school level math... When I see a question like that - something so basic it's a shock - it's incredibly clear that the professor put in the most minimal effort possible. Nearly dropped the entire subscription and ceased every course due to this lack of quality control from this single week. Week 2 is far better in quality. The lack of quality control is rather concerning - how one professor is clearly far less capable than every other presenter...

I think that this course has turned out to be too much "basic" according to my education. I believe that it was too much Excel-oriented (with really basic Excel notion).

Videos are too long. Length of videos should be reduced to exceed not more than 20min. First if the concept is conveyed in a crisp and clear manner and then practical examples are shown, the interest towards the course can be improvised.

Too simple!

I enjoyed the technical part of the course. However, if it is technical, I would be grateful if we tackle more complex problems, which may be met in the organizations. The cases we resolved now were rather academic, which is indeed good to start, but I would be happy to tackle enterprise-level problem, or at least learn the methods that are used in the organizations on big scale problems.

I would also add more business-related information. Now, the course looks like pure university course of optimization, at entry level.

Best Regards,

Krzysiek

Interesting introduction course to basic analytic tools

too much at a beginner level. the course is old and needs update. also nothing much of analytics are included in the course. the course should have been more real industrial problem oriented with real data rather than bookish perfect scenarios of the existing course.

Brief Profile: Sohail Butt

I am a man of 58 years old and having an experience of almost 30 years of Business Management of Pharmaceutical & Nutraceutical Industries of Pakistan. Presently I am having my own Consulting Company " AIMMS CONSULTING" and extending my services as Management Consultant to different companies of said sectors.

I am of the conviction that learning is never ending and have a habit of learning new ideas about my favorite subject about Operations Analytics.

I really appreciate highly the efforts of my respected dynamic & competent Instructors Associate. Prof. Senthil Veeraraghavan, Associate. Prof. Sergei Savin & Professor Noah Gans for Operational Analytics and enjoyed the course material and videos presentation of this course. Mind blowing conceptual approach was adopted especially in the areas of basic conceptual knowledge in depth. Overall it was my superb experience of learning.

SUGGESTION:

MY PERSONAL HUMBLE REQUEST, Please make also the important components of course material as a part of this Certificate with % AGGREGATE so that it has a much more worth & impact for the courses participated.

A separate Transcript must be issued with having Aggregate % Score and important Components of participated course.

Hard Copy of this certificate mail to my home address in Pakistan. Please use my credit card,I am ready to pay all expenses in this connection.

Thanks & best wishes to all Coursera Team.

Did not meet expectations - the entire material of the course could have been covered in 1 week, with the rest focusing on more complex and larger problems. However, I feel the focus was more on just giving small tasters of what's possible.

The course focused largely around calculating averages, standard deviations, and running simulations based on random numbers. All of this was done on small-scale examples, It did not dive into real-world applicable problems. The theoretical material was okay, not too impressive.

The course is very interesting and practical. They reinforced several knowledge acquired in the university. I would like to have access to more practical exercises of a higher level.

What I did not like is the kind of certificate provided by Wharton and Coursera. The certificate is full of warnings like: "this certificate does not confer a University grade, course credit or degree, and it does not verify the identity of the learner".

The feeling is that the certificate is not good.

An exceptionally organized course with sufficient examples, it provides an in depth analysis of the concepts introduced (optimization, decision trees, forecasting, simulations) and of the tools used.

The awesome effort by the Wharton Business School, Thanks to Wharton Business School & all the concerns & professors, who put their efforts in this course.

Great hands on examples that I'm already starting to use in my job now.

Amazing course, and really informative!

Wonderful Course, I learned a lot!

the course is great and the sequence is very good specially that in each week you can feel the importance of what you learned in the previous week , but in my opinion the course lacks complexity, i mean only basic concepts were discussed, it would be better if another 5th week is made just to be dedicated to discuss and solve complex and real life problems to see how these concepts will be applied.

Thanks so much for the course and the all amazing staff.

Excellent delivery of the course. Good amount of diving into material specifics to try to tie together explanations. One less star because I would have appreciated more real-world examples as part of the course, as well as additional focus on some other operations analytics. I am also curious if there are applications of big data and machine learning on operations analytics that are in use today, that were perhaps not covered as part of this course.

While these courses have interesting subjects, the content is very light, requires little effort and hence results in little learning.

Very poor class as it relates to the content and delivery. The vast majority of the class was having the professor recite what was already on the PowerPoint slides verbatim. The examples were not relevant to business, rather they were heavy in academia and learning jargon that I do not think I will ever use in my professional career.

Excellent course! All of the content in this course is hands on, you learn to actually apply some concepts of statistics to solve problems with optimization and simulation using Excel add-ons. The thought of discovering the next tool to solve the problem was tantalizing and kept me motivated - the videos flew by without my mind wandering much. Very gripping! At the end of the course, I feel like I've developed a substantial skill to DO something. All 4 weeks deliver something memorable, with later weeks noticeably building upon the previous ones. The optional reviews are highly recommended as they often go deeper and address something a bit more complex, especially in the enlightening final week with Prof. Noah Gans. The only improvement I could suggest is to the quizzes. They refer to problems covered in the lectures, and we have to go back to find them in the lecture slides again, which doesn't feel right. This could be avoided by including a small snapshot of the problem within the quiz itself. The other courses in this specialization (I've only seen Customer and People Analytics so far) deliver a wide range of insights from the professors' research, but they mostly just deliver the information, which can quickly become overwhelming. This one draws the learner in to learn from experience, which makes one walk away very satisfied. Aces!

Good course. Easy as hell if you have a stat or quantitative background already, but I found it useful as a gateway into linear programming as well as a good overview of the classes of problems encountered in operations. I was hoping there would be a little on queueing but that's ok.

Compared to the other courses in this module, it is a bit more video time (almost twice customer analytics), but each concept is carefully explained. The quizzes are hands down the best of all the Wharton BA courses. You actually solve problems! Customer and HR are too conceptual and accounting is just too nitpicky with questions packing too many concepts.

The instructors speak very slowly and clearly. This will be great for international students, but if you're a native speaker, I'd suggest listening at 1.25x or 1.5x.

The course was very well structured. I liked the way the material was introduced and explained. it was very easy to follow. The use of the IDEA case study throughout the course was excellent. Supplementary examples and quiz questions offered good insights into the material. Use of excel features was done exceptionally well. Thanks for showing us how to use the solver and random number generator. Last example brought the elements together very well. Additional lecture on converting a non-linear problem by introducing additional decision variable and constraints was appreciated. Though i was going to see something on exponential smoothing (advanced material) - did i miss something?

Much, much more engaging than Customer Analytics - you can see that the professors put real thought in how to explain their topics. Each week has multiple accompanying Excel files so you can follow along and play around with the concepts and models. Each lesson builds on the last lesson's content, leading up to explaining a satisfying solution to the Newsvendor Problem. I appreciated the optional practice problems and solutions, and have already put some of the things I've learned in this course to good use. If you're comfortable with Excel and you're watching multiple lectures in a day, I suggest watching at x1.25 speed as the profs do repeat some info and formulas from time to time.

Even though i have studied most of it in my Intro to data analytics class, but i believe after taking this course, especially the topics like decision tree, which seemed very difficult back then, now has become very clear. Especially, taking the 100% in week 4 was very reassuring for me! I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who wants to pursue his career in in any kind of analytics; in fact, i think decision making is not/shouldn't be limited to analytics field; we make decisions in every field, hence everyone must take this course. The faculty of Wharton School of Business is also simply amazing!

Well, it was a superlative course, to say the least. As a person having expertise in finance and quantitative analysis, this course leveraged my skills , while adding immensely to them.

I knew Excel as a beginner, but the course exposed me to its immense potential. Predictive statistics, decisions under low uncertainty using Solvex and Data Analysis, exposure to Decision Trees and their interpretation from a risk-reward angle- all these were laid out in a very interesting manner. This enabled practical and inquisitive learning, making you hungrier for more courses as well planned as this one.