Excellent instructors who are at the top of their game in the industry. Good balance of theory and applied learning, including hands-on exercises with SQL, Spark, and Hadoop. Recommended for newcomers to the field who already have a business background.
This program offers a good introduction to statistics, data science, data management, working with large data sets, analytics theory and big data tools. As someone who hasn't coded for 10+ years, I was able to pick it up pretty quickly and complete all of the coding via what was taught in the class or tutorials/lab sessions. The program has exposed us to most of the standard tools: SQL, RegEx, R, Watson, Hive, Pig, Spark, Hadoop, etc.. Also, you get exposure to analytics methodologies (clustering, regression, decision trees, machine learning). The program has been a mix of theory and more practical learning - which helps ensure you really understand the purpose of the tool or method and how to apply it to real-world or business problems. The program has been a great way for me to build up my knowledge and expertise in big data and machine analytics. I am not a full-time technologist, but work with many, and we now have a common language and tool set to problem solve with together. This course would also be a great complementary skill set for someone who is already a technologist or already a data analyst who could then take what they learned and build more depth on it through their professional activities.
This program taught me not only a specialized skill set, but also a broad range of skills that allow me to adapt to new challenges and technologies as the field continues to evolve. Thank you to everyone who worked on the design, development and implementation of this program.