I am sure this is the best course out there to help students/Professionals to understand the complexity of the optimization problems specially designed and explained by Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck in his own hilarious style . The assignments are really challenging and make you up to try different strategies. Most of the times the classical approaches like Mixed Integer programming and Constraint Programming fail to provide solution in a reasonable time.But that's when you become of intuitive developing your own ideas/ heuristics.This course covers a lot of optimization concepts like dynamic programming, Constraint Programming ,Mixed Integer programming and Local search.

Waiting for the next one!.. Till then keep optimizing ....

This was a really excellent course. The exercises were very challenging, but extremely enlightening. I used an external library (pulp) to solve one of the assignments (integer programming), but learning how to properly use the library was an interesting exercise in itself. The lectures were very good too. I have no formal computer science background, and I was able to complete the course without using too many extra learning resources--that is the course is reasonably self-contained. I wish more coursera courses (and frankly courses I took in college/graduate school) reached the same high bar of quality this course offers.

Truly challenging course. Had enrolled out of curiosity. Before starting had only basic knowledge on combinatorial optimization. The course content is good and the course theme is basically exploratory. Really a dense course if determined to study in depth.The instructor is brilliant and his teaching style keeps you motivated all the time. The assignments are good and requires you to think thoroughly about the problem. Getting a higher grade is obviously challenging if you are a newbie to this topic, although scoring a decent grade is definitely possible. Overall loved the experience.

Prof. VanHayeck puts his best effort in making this challenging subject (at least for me :P) seem fun and simplified. Of course we need to do additional reading to be able to understand the concepts and implement them. The programs become tougher as the course progress. I had to explore a lot for the right algorithm/heuristic to use in each assignment. These exercises also made me realize how crucial coding is (correctness, speed and quality -- all are equally important) and what is the significance of different algorithms and heuristics.

This was not an easy course and it consumed more time than I expected, but it was worth the effort and I learned a lot. Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck is a very engaging teacher. Even for complex topics his explanations are clear and to the point and illustrated by interesting examples. He has a very special body language and an amazing screen presence. The assignments were challenging, but essential to the learning process. Overall, this was possibly the best online training that I have ever taken.

A very comprehensive and challening course on optimization. Algorithms are explained at a high level and is up to the student to implement them (on any language, but Python is sugested). Canonical problems in optimization are tackled, such as TSP, VRP and facility location. As a Data Scientist with no Computer Science background, implementing those algorithms to pass assignmets have been very challenging. Industrial solvers like ortools, gurobi, etc. can be used, but they are not covered.

One of the best and most interesting courses I have taken a part in. Very demanding and frustrating sometimes but absolutely brilliant. Interesting lectures, problems to solve, etc. Small improvement in my opinion can be achieved in two areas:

1. I could not get used to instructor's showmanship and he sometimes covers up the slides.

2. I would suggest changing submission format not to post code but solution. In this case we would not be limited in programming language's choice.

The programming assignments of this course are very challenge and the pursuit of the 'Good Optimization' is torturous, especially after Knapsack Problem, such as the TSP, Facility Problem and VRP. However, the sense of achievement gained when you passed the online judge is also unspeakable. Last but not least, Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck is really a nice man, he is humorous and charming. Wish you a memorable and nice experiences on the on the journey of OPTIMIZATION.

One of the most challenging courses I have taken, but extremely rewarding. The course does not hand hold you through assignments but rather uses the lectures to introduce and explain concepts (exceptionally well).

The assignments support a wide variety of approaches and typically require extensive further research and understanding.

They are not kidding about the time commitment, but if you can make the time for it this is an incredible course - highly recommend

I already knew some concepts but with this course i am able to finally understand them. It is very well explained and it goes through a lot of topics in discrete optimization, giving a good theoretical and experimental basis.

The assignments are hard but very rewarding when you complete them. They push you to think about the problem and how to solve it, even with the right tools you still have to put everything together, just like in a real world situation.

Good course. The instructor is really a fast talker and it may be hard to grasp everything at the first time you watch the videos. About the assignments: The assignments are really hard. Yes! Really really hard. I've never taken any MOOC course where the assignments are so hard. Al in all, I can say that this course really thought me something about discrete optimization, and I would love to learn even more about this interesting field.

This is my fifth or sixt online course on coursera, and it is without a doubt the best one I have done. Apart from the little goofy start with Indiana Jones, I simple loved the course. There was a lot of useful material covering what would have been several courses at my university. The assignments were challenging, sometimes frustrating, but really fun as well. I had a lot of fun doing this course.

Really enjoyed doing the assignments of this course, the only challenge is that some of the test cases in assignments took a lot of time to get solved, hence it would be good suggestion to give an estimate on how much time to solve each test case can be considered as practical. The rest of the course offereda very good learning and insights to further dig into the hto topics

Amazing course! The Lecturer is not only a leader in the field, but also an excellent educator. The concepts are explained clearly. Historical remarks and anecdotes bring the material to life. I also really enjoyed the assignments. They were challenging and quite time-consuming, but very helpful toward the learning experience.

Amazing course, one of the best in this topic. Its so motivating how Pascal Van Hentenryck is presenting the lectures with that much enthusiasm and then all the programming assignments are also very well crafted. It is obvious how much work has been done to create this course. Thank you very much for this amazing course!

Just finished the last assignment and want to say huge thanks to prof. Van Hentenryck and all the crew for putting their efforts into this brilliant course. One of the best courses I've done on Coursera.

PS : to all who is just starting this course - embrace yourself, the ride is gonna be though but it's woth it!

I appreciate the enthusiasm from the professor's teaching. Also the quality of the homework is very high, which help me deeply understand the concept about optimization methods. I highly recommend this course to all the people who desire the basic knowledge about NP-hard problem, and optimization thought.

Difficult course, but rewarding once you have completed the assignments. This course presents a variety of discrete optimization problems to be solved. Great course overall, although I wish the course is structured such that we don't need to read research papers to complete the assignments.

One of the most challenging and interesting sources among all that I've passed so far. The lector has it's own hilarious style of teaching. All the material is carefully created and well structured. Every time that you pass the programming assignment, you feel that it's a real achievement.

Best course I have done so far on Coursera. The assignments are the best part of the course and are very challenging but ensure that you learn and understand the material. You will want to have some programming experience as you will need to code optimization algorithms from scratch.

This course is extremely interesting and well-prepared. But keep in mind that it needs A LOT of commitment to get through the assignments. A proper prep-course for understanding combinatorial optimization and getting a taste about its applications in solving real-world problems.

Awesome! It was my very first course on this platform and I coudn't be more satisfied. The main instructor was hilarious sometimes and finally I terminated to love him hahaha. It's dense but this course it is perfect to any student of computer science, maths or economics.

Very challenging as the assignments can be very hard, especially if you want to write your own algorithms and not use a pre-existing tool. The teacher is fantastic, very clear and enthusiastic at the same time, you can feel the passion from his presentations.

I was surprised how clear are the Lectures. It's such fun taking this course. We use the techniques (Dynamic Progrmaming, Local Search, etc) to solve those NP-complete problems. Highly recommond it to anyone who wants to refresh their optimization skills.

Excellent Course, I would highly recommend for all algorithmist and programmers. It step by steps teaches how to approach NP-hard problems. The way the professor teaches make this highly difficult subject easy. Of-course assignments are very challenging.