I learned to think!

It was awesome 😊

loved learning

thanks

Good overall, but week 6 in particular was below my expectations. The students should not be answering questions in order to correct errors in the lecturer's phrasing; you should simply do the sensible thing and re-record the lecture, ensuring accuracy before posting. The final (albeit optional) project of the course is to write a solver for the 15-puzzle. This involved some graph theory self study, since graph theory is out of the scope of this course. A hastily explained intro to graph theory during the final lecture without slides is not sufficient to prepare the students for this task. I would strongly suggest a revision of the entire 6th week.

I found some of the questions difficult to understand, but I couldn't tell if my misunderstanding was because of the concepts being new, or if the wording of the question was just odd. The course might benefit from a second pass by a native English speaker on the quiz portions - test are already incredibly stressful even when they are super clear. Aside from that though, the course was great. I learned a few new ways to look at problems which I think will help me in my day to day work. I found the instructors very knowledgeable and funny as well.

Keep up the good work!

The Course is Good overall but the entire lectures in Week 6 is not clear to me . Alexander sir done a great job in Week 1 and 2 but not that great in Week 6. Even though I re-watched the lectures again, I can't able to get full information given in the videos......I struggled so much in Quiz questions of Week 6...

I generally liked the course. However, it wasn't clear from the beginning that you need to know how to code before starting this course. This was a rather upsetting discovery, as I was under the impression that I will learn how to code during this course as well as get a better grasp of mathematical thinking.

The last one was a little bit hard, still couldn't write the code for the 15 puzzle game. Did it just by intuitive trial error

Broken English and an inflated $79 to take practice tests, but the professor is knowledgeable and makes proofs fun.

Week 6 could have been improved, apart from that excellent!!

very very fun way to understand simple things

I definitely learned a thing or two about types of proofs, but this class could have been constructed much better. The biggest flaw was that even after going through the entire course, the professors only rarely connected the material to computer science, despite the course being called "Mathematical Thinking in Computer Science". I appreciate their approach of "solve puzzle" -> "learn about relevant proof to be able more efficiently solve similar puzzles" but the course would be better if they tied each concept into computer science / algorithms etc at the end of each section. Beyond that, there are some general course construction issues. The professors often make mistakes in the videos, but rather than actually fix the videos, they just put a comment screen over the video pointing out the error. Speaking of the comment screens, they often ask questions relevant to the lecture, but they cover the whole screen and you can't actually see the content they are asking about, so you have to skip the question, go back, and then let the comment screen appear again before you can reasonably attempt to answer the question; this is an annoying process. To improve this, the content needed to answer each question should be shown within the comment screen itself.

Some of the explanations of concepts was just not clear and there were many verbal errors and some really odd editing in many of the videos. Overall the quality of this course is so so.

In order to complete this class, you need experience in programming and problem solving using a programming language.

The instructor seems super nice and friendly and smart, buuuut. I'm not sure if there is a more methodical way to teach this material, I just find the presentation of the puzzles very frustrating. It's not really clicking for me to keep watching examples, and after a couple of weeks, I still feel like I'm not really learning anything -- just feel like I'm watching someone show me 'tricks' to solve puzzles in the hopes that some pattern will suddenly spark a light bulb. At every step of the way, I keep thinking 'nope, still not getting it', 'nope, that hint didn't work for me', 'nope, you're gonna have to explain it all the way to the end'. I can't help but feel there has to be a better way to teach mathematical thinking...

First off - this course claims there's no Prerequisites but I think there should be. Often there are equations appearing within the content that the lecturers don't explain - they expect you to know how to solve them. This shouldn't be the case for a No-Prereq course.

I lost interest by the time I got to week 4. The recorded videos stopped and it was just a wall of text to read. Very disappointing to pay for a course with no one explaining the text to you - just get a book from the library at that point.

The puzzles were great at the beginning, and the content was interesting, but overall it's clear that work needs to be put into this course. Don't waste your money.

Overall, it is a good course to learn some problem-solving skills and get you to think. But there was a real disconnect between the quizzes and learning for me. Like, I don't really know what I learned here or what the purpose was. I finished it because I like puzzels but I am not sure I would recommend it.

One problem for me was it doesn't feel linear. For example, I didn't receive some instruction, then some problems to solve with that instruction. After, I didn't receive further instruction that built upon previous learning and etc. It felt very random.

Interesting topics, lots of puzzles, but lacks structure. Lectures are well-prepared, but as someone new to this space, I would have preferred a bit more structure to the learning, with a clearer idea of how we would incorporate the concepts into something more than simply solving odd parlor trick puzzles.

As it stands now, I'm not confident I would recognize when I would be able to deploy any of the skills/concepts taught in the course. A shame, because the instructors are easy to follow and engaging.

Overall I found the quality of the course quite poor. The course is offered by "University of San Diego", however all of the lecturers are Russian, which is a bit confusing. I don't mind the fact that they're Russian, however the content of the course (lectures/quizzes/puzzles) is full of (English) mistakes, and quite a few questions/answers have been worded in such a way that they don't really make sense. This course clearly hasn't been reviewed by a copywriter.

As much as I liked this course, I wouldn't recommend it. I felt there was a language barrier, using sloppy English for an academic environment. Pronunciation was often hard to understand. And I found the teaching methods often to being too rough in the spirit of being more "challenging". Definitely not what I was expecting from an North American University.

Not great quality of teaching. They made lots of assumptions about what you knew and could have explained things a lot more comprehensively. They also made a lot of mistakes In their speaking, and corrected them with numerous on screen corrections, which made It hard to get Into the flow of the class.

The course itself is good. Easy to hard problems. But the external tools which helps you in solving puzzles does not work. So, you will be unable to get through the course. This may be perfectly OK if you care about the grades, but not if you really want to learn.

I personally think the content could have been better structured and explained - I had to frequently refer to other materials on the internet to understand some of the concepts. Also, the programming task in Week 6 is not designed for a beginner such as myself.

I decided not to complete the "Mathematical Thinking in Computer Science" course for several reasons. Firstly, the course content lacked clarity in explaining complex mathematical concepts related to computer science. The explanations often left me struggling to understand the fundamental principles, making it challenging to progress effectively.

Secondly, the course materials failed to provide practical applications of mathematical thinking in the context of computer science. I was hoping to learn how to apply these concepts to real-world coding and problem-solving scenarios, but this aspect was notably absent from the content.

Additionally, the course's interactivity was limited, primarily relying on text and videos. I believe that hands-on exercises, coding challenges, and interactive simulations are crucial for grasping and retaining the subject matter effectively.

Lastly, the assessment methods focused heavily on theoretical recall, rather than evaluating practical application and problem-solving skills. This misalignment made it difficult for me to gauge my progress accurately and left me questioning the relevance of the content to real-world situations.

Considering these factors, I felt that the course did not align with my learning preferences and goals. I believe that a course with more practical examples, interactive elements, and relevant assessments would be more suitable for enhancing my mathematical thinking in the context of computer science.