Python for Genomic Data Science
Johns Hopkins University · View on Coursera ↗
Taught by Mihaela Pertea, PhD, Steven Salzberg, PhD
Data ScienceHealth
About the course
This class provides an introduction to the Python programming language and the iPython notebook. This is the third course in the Genomic Big Data Science Specialization from Johns Hopkins University.
The dissent
The most-upvoted critical review (50 votes, 1.0★).
“This course started out very good but spiraled out of control quickly. There was no detail in the later materials (Weeks 3 and 4) in uses/applications which made it virtually impossible to finish the course without spending an incredible amount of time outside of the class attempting to learn material. The early quizzes were not bioinformatics focused and required a fairly sophisticated level of machine learning to answer some of the questions. In regards to the later material, there should be much more detail. For example on learning how to create dictionaries. That was AWESOME! But nothing beyond how to create them and how to use them. This is NOT a beginner course. Also, the female instructor was awful, she read from a que so much that it was easier to just download the PDF and read it myself.”
Coursera's 4.3 comes from 1,830 ratings. Of those, 7.3% are 1–2★.
Starisk reads the reviews learners voted most helpful, and weights each by the square root of its votes: a review with 80 upvotes counts about five times one with 2. Unvoted reviews are not skipped out of laziness — by this model they carry no evidence that other students endorsed them.
That measures what the most-endorsed reviews say, not “true quality.” The rating distribution above is the whole population, so you can see the sample next to it.
Reviews read on 23 Oct 2026.Read them on Coursera ↗