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Back to Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners by University of California San Diego

4.2
stars
1,545 ratings

About the Course

Are you interested in learning how to program (in Python) within a scientific setting? This course will cover algorithms for solving various biological problems along with a handful of programming challenges helping you implement these algorithms in Python. It offers a gently-paced introduction to our Bioinformatics Specialization (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics), preparing learners to take the first course in the Specialization, "Finding Hidden Messages in DNA" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/dna-analysis). Each of the four weeks in the course will consist of two required components. First, an interactive textbook provides Python programming challenges that arise from real biological problems. If you haven't programmed in Python before, not to worry! We provide "Just-in-Time" exercises from the Codecademy Python track (https://www.codecademy.com/learn/python). And each page in our interactive textbook has its own discussion forum, where you can interact with other learners. Second, each week will culminate in a summary quiz. Lecture videos are also provided that accompany the material, but these videos are optional....

Top reviews

HD

Apr 17, 2016

I give this course 5 star because I did Bioinformatics I and I totally enjoy it.

This is where programming can be fun, and practical, and you'll learn some basic biology too.

What's not to love?

HL

Aug 15, 2017

I learned a lot from this difficult and time-consuming course! It covers biological concepts using Python. It made learning Python more interesting for me, since I have always loved biology.

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251 - 275 of 459 Reviews for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

By Michael H

•

Jan 12, 2021

There where some annoying problems when taking the quizzes. For example .1 was wrong, but 0.1 was correct. Other than that it was pretty good. I already have a degree in computers so the algorithms weren't too hard, but they could be difficult for someone who has never programmed. I only wish subsequent classes were also free.

By Mirac E

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Jul 14, 2021

In my opinion this course provided quite an improvement to my Python programming and problem solving skills. Reason I cut off 1 star from my rating was : in some steps I couldn't understand the instructions so I didn't know what to do. In future revisions you can give more examples or schemas to explain the concepts better.

By Ramis R

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Jul 9, 2020

Pretty solid course for a beginner. I think the methods used here were nicely game-ified so it was fun and the course material was challenging. However, as in most programming or higher-level courses, the user is rewarded highly for doing their own research outside to apply to the situations required in the course material.

By laura p

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Jul 23, 2020

This course is difficult for beginners, who have never take a programming course before. It took me a lot of time (days) to figure out most of the codes in this course. Although i couldn`t fully understand all the topics, i finished this course having a general idea of the basics in Python and what i need to learn next.

By Jeffrey L P

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Aug 30, 2016

Not a bad course, but it is a python programming class. There are some steeper steps at times if you are not used to python. Support can seem distant if you hit one of these steeper steps. It's best to have a coding attitude and not a "I want to read about biology and genetics" attitude to approach this class.

By Abraham B S

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May 7, 2020

Although it is said that you will learn programming from scratch, people with no experience might find this course difficult, specially Weeks 3 and 4. I encourage newly programmers to not give up, there is light at the end of the tunnel and you can find useful information in the comments.

By Carlos A E S

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Jan 8, 2020

Very good course to get an introduction to bioinformatics. I would also recommend taking an R language oriented course. On the other hand, this course would benefit from an update in its feedback system so that students are more likely to finish and avoid getting stuck at certain points.

By Kie V I S

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Jul 2, 2017

Overall it was a good experience. I had so much fun learning the connection between molecular biology and programming. The programming assignment was okay but the theory of molecular biology was still out of reach for me. We had to use a third party application (stepik), which is good.

By Carolina G

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Nov 16, 2023

It becomes quite challenging at the end for someone with no previous experience in coding (I, myself, could not complete the last code challenge - perhaps with more experience I could come back and get it done). Nevertheless, the information you take away from the course is excellent!

By mohammad m n

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Nov 1, 2020

a really great way for leaning what bioinformatics is but for me, who is a bachelors in computer science, the biology parts of it were a bit hard to understand, and the programming parts were a bit boring, especially when I had to copy-paste my codes every time for the next step

By Rafael N

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Oct 22, 2020

The course is not really for beginners. As a molecular biologist and chemist with little programming experience, I had to do crash course in Python 3 programming. In contrast, there's a lot of study resources made available. People from the comments section were very helpful.

By Yangjiexue L

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Oct 6, 2020

I enjoyed this course and it is really helpful for me.

But I have to say this is NOT for programming beginners. If you are a programmer with no biology background, you probably will be fine. But if you are a biologist with no programming background, big chance you'll be lost.

By sarvanshi s s

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Apr 21, 2020

Course is well defined and stepik tool is very good and useful. But sometimes it becomes a bit confusing to understand and there is no option to find the fault in code or correct answer. After a particular number of efforts, there must be option for correct solution.

By Jonathan N

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Jan 14, 2018

Very interesting course, but its estimated time is about 17 h 20min. I took about 53h and am an absolute beginner in this, so this took a lot longer than I thought it would. I think the estimated time should be revised up to take programming beginners into account.

By Michael G

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Oct 12, 2017

The Stepik textbook needs to be updated. The quantity of test cases and the quality leave a lot to be determined. The format of input on the quizzes needs to be specified more clearly. Otherwise a great course but I would not market it towards beginners.

By Stuart W

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Jun 14, 2020

I enjoyed this course a lot. It was very challenging. I am an experienced Python programmer so the programming side was pretty straightforward however the exercises took a lot of determination to complete. I can definetely say that I learnt something.

By Jefo H G

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Sep 26, 2021

Overall it's a good foundation course for those who haven't known Bioinformatics before. But it could be better if some concepts can be more detailed explained, and some tests' complexity could be more progressively increased.

By Ken V

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Jul 13, 2018

overall, it's a good course. But it has many places to improve. It's better if you have the biological and programming background, or you gonna struggle. And some tricky and sometimes misleading parts can cost you a long time.

By Priyanka K

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Sep 11, 2022

It was a very informative and good course but definately not for the beginners. If one donot have prior experience in python programming then it would take more time and efforts. Overall nice course to attempt and experience.

By Surur K

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Jan 11, 2021

Coding questions should require a larger breakdown of the solution you intend to get for the datasets. I come from a cs background however I can see how otherwise, students will struggle immensely in this course

By Florencia M

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Nov 9, 2020

This is a very challenging course which taught me plenty but failed to explain some statistical thing with precision. Though, I really recommend it, but I would also advise people to lean some Python in advance

By srinidi v

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May 27, 2020

Its a really interesting course.. Being from a computer and math background with interest in biology, this was a great inspiration. The tool helped me work and understand a lot. Its surely good for a beginner!

By Nielay S

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Apr 19, 2020

It was a very informative course!! but some technical and biological terms were hard to understand. It would've been much better if more detailed explanation was provided regarding the coding and the terms.

By Sujithra S

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Oct 27, 2022

This is beginners course, which will be a good launchpad for any one starting off. You need some basic programming knowledge and basic idea on biology. I would recommend this course for the beginners.

By Veronica Y

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Apr 8, 2020

It was challenging, but I learned a lot of tricks while coding. It will be useful if you teach how to install Python (Anaconda Spyder or Jupiter)

It took me more than 4 hours to complete all the tasks