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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology via edX

Overview

6.00.2x will teach you how to use computation to accomplish a variety of goals and provides you with a brief introduction to a variety of topics in computational problem solving . This course is aimed at students with some prior programming experience in Python and a rudimentary knowledge of computational complexity. You will spend a considerable amount of time writing programs to implement the concepts covered in the course. For example, you will write a program that will simulate a robot vacuum cleaning a room or will model the population dynamics of viruses replicating and drug treatments in a patient's body.

Topics covered include:

  • Advanced programming in Python 3
  • Knapsack problem, Graphs and graph optimization
  • Dynamic programming
  • Plotting with the pylab package
  • Random walks
  • Probability, Distributions
  • Monte Carlo simulations
  • Curve fitting
  • Statistical fallacies

Taught by

Eric Grimson and John Guttag

Reviews

4.5 rating, based on 31 Class Central reviews

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  • This course is a second course in CS Foundation XSeries. I took this course last year and again I could say this is one of the most intellectually stimulating class ever. The Psets were challenging and well designed to help students get familiar with data science. There are some prerequisites before taking this class which are familiarity with Python and programming concepts and desire to learn by doing.
  • Dolly Ye
    I love everything about this course.It is the most comprehensive and rigorous beginner cs class online! You will at times struggle with programming assignments but remember,you will emerge with a love for computer science and ability to pick up any new concept.
  • Great Python course of intermediate level, that I remember with pleasure. Excellent support from instructors. The second course in the according series. The first course I passed as audit student (since I have shortage of money) but this course I decided to take on certificate track. I want to warm that the final exam is more difficult than you probably will expect.
  • Really good course however it's quite difficult and there's a heavy focus on statistics and machine learning so not recommended for beginners.
  • One of the excellent course that I have completed. All those who are interested in this topic must give this course a try. During the course, you will find it to be interesting and on completion, you will find yourself elevated!
  • Anonymous
    This course is great if you just want to watch the lectures. The work is awful. It's not that its hard, because it's a programming class. It's more the way it's run. The TAs are very unhelpful and often delete comments if they view them as revealing too much, without responding to questions. Do not take this course unless you want to watch the lectures.
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