I was somewhat put off by critical comments about the third course in this series, but have to disagree with the reviewers. Yes, it is tougher and, yes, the instructor doesn't have the "schwung" of the other two instructors, but that doesn't affect the quality of this course. His walkthrough of the derivation of PCA is thorough and systematic, and builds on material that has been presented in the earlier lectures.

In fact, looking back on the entire specialisation, I would retrospectively grade the first two courses a notch lower (even if they're excellent), simply because they "sailed through" a bit too easily. The exercises in those courses required little thinking apart from recalling what was said in the lectures. In this course, exercises tended to go beyond or ahead of the material presented in the lectures. Solving them required active thinking, reading, and problem solving, which in the end brings a more thorough understanding.

One of the best applied mathematics I have attended. This course provides a graduate-level outstanding analysis of linear algebraic data analysis using the next approach:

- Statistical Learning of Datasets

- Linear Algebra of Transformations: Orthogonal Projections, Inner Products in Finite Dimensions

- Analysis of Covariance Matrix

- PCA Algorithm via a constrained minimization problem.

There are also studied some applications:

1. Numpy Programming

2. KNN algorithm

3. Classification, Logistic Regression

4. Encoding and Decoding Information

The course and whole specialisation is suitable for people who have a solid mathematical background because some of theories are provided in a review, given that other mathematics courses have been studied. The main goal is to formulate the PCA algorithm and related topics. This is a master of Linear Algebra in Data Processing.

Thank you Imperial College!

I find this course a good use of my time, I have learnt a number of new things from it and it was quite a fun playing around with the programming assignments. What I especially like are the detailed math explanations/derivations and the reading materials/lecture notes provided (so that I have texts to refer to, instead of always having to view the videos again).

This course is obviously more challenging than the first two in the specialization (I'd say the first two are too easy as 'math' courses), one needs a good understanding of the first two, esp. linear algebra, to know what's going on here. I'm most satisfied with this course among the three, and it's sad to see so many people giving negative reviews on this and complaining on the depth of the contents.

The coverage of PCA provided by the instructor was wide and provided me with an intuitive basis for executing the PCA algorithm in the wild. Ultimately, the subject and its various steps were easy to understand. That said, I gained many great insights watching Khan Academy videos especially ones on eigenvalues/eigenvectors. By far the hardest part of the class was implementing and executing the python code. There the devil was in, and sometimes, outside of the details. I cursed the name of the Instructor more than once (a lot more). But, in the end, because of the real life, no safety net experience, I was able to jump right into PCA (and other feature engineering projects) adding value to my team at work on day 1.

Best course out of the series so far. A fine balance between theory and derivations, and practice with the programming assignments. It seems that they have solved their programming assignment issues (the first one still has some problems with the grader I believe). This course does require you to have some prior experience, though, so if you are new to programming or linear algebra (not just the concepts but how to apply them) it's bets to take the first two courses with some additional help (maybe Khan academy or even MIT OCW. I will certainly refer to this course in the future, as well as the professor's book on Mathematics for ML.

Even though one might read quite a few negative reviews about this course, I having completed this course certainly can tell that I learnt the most while doing this course. The course was indeed hard and challenging but the good thing that came out of this course was it gave me the ability to learn to study quite a few topics extensively on my own. The course had the book on "Mathematics for Machine Learning" which acted as a great supplement to this course. Overall, I'd ask anyone who is seriously interested in learning the extensive Math behind Machine learning, to take this course.

This is an excellent course first covers statistics, looks back to inner products and projections, thereafter it connects all of that and introduces PCA. The knowledge that you've gathered throughout the first two courses gets applied here. Granted, it's more abstract and challenging than the others, I wouldn't give a worse rating just because of that. You'll need to dive into certain topics on your own and if you strengthen your coding skills for the programming exercises. Nevertheless, it's just as highly rewarding as the first two.

This course is too good ,difficult level of this course from other too of this specialization is more.

Having patience and more practice lead to more successful .

If anyone want to learn Machine learning course then after doing this Machine Learning course is simple because most of the thing you have learn through this course

This specialization makes you better and better and you learn many more new and interesting thing related to real world example with practice assignment

Thanks a lot for this to all the mentors

This was the most challenging of the three classes in the series. I thought the instructor did an excellent job of moving from theory to practice, and in the end I came away with a good understanding of the topic. As a developer, part of my personal learning style is to shadow these types of lectures in code. I did (or attempted) naive implementations on most slides - that definitely helped my comprehension of this challenging material. Be prepared to work hard, occasionally head scratch and you'll do fine.

Big thanks to the teacher, this is the most challenging course among the other courses on this specialization. It took me a full 24 hours to complete the final assignment, PCA Algorithm. But, it's worth it, I really enjoyed this course besides how hard it is lmao. One more, unfortunately, there will not be much discussion on the forums, since there's a few people enroll in this course compared to others and the assignment, especially the last one was very hard, anyway hope you enjoy this course, see ya.

Hi,

The course tries to cover most of the important mathematical concepts in Mathematics applied to PCA. The assignments were a bit tough, but i guess that the road ahead when we do programming for data sets in real world applications would not be that easy. Loved the way the lectures were delivered and the programming assignments help to build a strong base for applications of linear algebra that we have done earlier.

Thanks and Regards

Jitesh Tripathi, PhD in Applied Mathematics

Although there are glitches with the submission of assignments and some of the videos by instructor are brief, I will still rate it as a 5 star for the content covered. This is 3rd course of the specialization and need solid understanding of the concepts covered in first 2. Considering the more challenging content covered in this course, Instructor did a great job. All instructors in the specialization are awesome, Would love to do more advanced courses from the same team.

This is a difficult course, but it really gave me an appreciation of the mathematics behind machine learning. I encourage anyone doing this course to read Deisenroth's free book Mathematics for Machine Learning (mml-book.com) to better understand the notation and technique used to get to the proofs. If anything, the rigor of this course inspired me to further pursue learning in mathematics to strengthen my machine learning foundation.

Superb course - great presentation of conceptually demanding material. The issue is that there are a few longstanding bugs - especially with submission of assignments that should have been fixed long ago and are urgently needed. It is extremely disappointing that Coursera has not addressed such a basic issue for so long. Except for the issue noted above, this could very well be one of the finest courses on the Coursera platform.

Dr. Deisenroth is/was uniquely qualified as an instructor. It was indeed a bit challenging at times and even with a graduate degree in biophysics I've not had the depth of experience the PCA course required in linear algebra. But increasing my understanding and ability with machine learning with plans to develop AI integration in applications I'm working on, the PCA course was an excellent finish to the 3-course specialization.

This is the most challedging course of the specialization! The material is explained very well by the istructor though and it only requires you to spend some time in digesting the concepts. Some of the assignments are tough, mostly due to the unclear instructions. Four weeks is enough time though to work on and pass all the assigments, provided you have had some courses in linear algebra and calculus in the past.

The whole content of this course is fantastic, not all details were covered in the video, but main ideas were expressed in a great way buy math formulations. Pay attention to those vectors and matrices, especially their dimensions, this will help you solve problem quickly. More important, matrix is just a way to express a bunch of similar things, knowing the meaning of those basis vectors is important.

Very challenging compared to other 2 courses in the specialization. Learned and struggled a lot towards completion. I am sure I will be visiting this course again for refresher. Wonderful professor that led the course, although candidates undertaking this course must have more than beginner level understanding of python - Numpy and debugging.

Thank you for this specialization course.

This is one of toughest course in this specialization. Having said that, it was interesting to learn about the inner working of the PCA and is well taught. At times it was tough to follow and could have been better if there are some additional examples explained to reinforce the concept. Also week 4 is kind of rushed with little or no time to fully appreciate the beauty of PCA.

A little more challenging than the other 2 courses in this series. The programming examples on K nearest neighbors, eigenvector fitting of facial data, and the PCA implementation are neat and rewarding. Can't help but feel there's still a great deal of math details that is only briefly mentioned - oh well there's always the free textbook to reference. Overall highly recommended.

I love the amount of math in the course! However, 1) I would like to move towards the student doing more work instead of professor demonstrating their skills in the labs; 2) The quality of the videos: it's important to five some time after the lecture is over to write down the material instead of forcing me to scroll the video back to the point where the notes are still seen;

Actually I was not encouraged while I am taking the course since the quest for understanding such abstract concepts required me to spend a lot of outside research and reading. Course also requires a strong understanding of Python and Anaconda (for debugging purposes). I can not say that I understand everything regarding PCA, but it became a nice foundation to built upon.

Unlike the other two modules, the course is quite challenging, some details are omitted in the explanation and one has to look for them in the forum or on the internet. Some notebooks for programming have problems and need to be downloaded and run virtually. Still, the content is exciting, thanks to the Imperial College London for the course and the opportunity.

This course is challenging, it requires a lot of participation in the forum plus an overlook on the internet to help you out understand a little more how the vector (eigenvectors) relate to the efficiency of PCA. It is pretty interesting to understand the algorithm itself and how it works. Be aware to review a lot and take your time to understand things.

This course is really challenging. A strong mathematical background is necessary or it needs to be developed during the lectures and self-study. The professor's explanations are clear, and still lead to complex ideas which is great. Programming assignments are also difficult, however they serve as a superb opportunity to develop your skills in Python.