Coursera/Stanford online algorithms I course – a retrospective

"The exam included questions from the lectures" When I was a student I hated this practice from some professors.

You took a class called "Design and Analysis of Algorithms I" and complained that the problem sets were too easy. What were you expecting?

I'm glad you found it easy. Personally, I found it very challenging: although I thought I matched the requirements for mathematical background that Prof Roughgarden outlined in the intro lecture, it turned out to be a struggle to keep up with some of the concepts when it came to apply them in the theory questions.

The programming exercises were fun, but I don't think they were really the point of the course - this "part 1", at least, was much more about analysis than about design.

As a contrast, I've just started their compilers course: there the theory questions are slightly easier, whereas the programming questions are much more involved - the first one has already taken me several hours and I'm nowhere near finished.

I think the course was at the right difficulty considering that it was an on-line course targeted towards an audience with different backgrounds and skill levels. In fact, in the forums there were a few people complaining about it being too difficult. Plus a course that is not targeted towards full time students can't really have the same effort levels as one that it is. If the course turns out to be too easy for you, maybe it wasn't designed for you.

I don't think forum complaints are a very god indicator of the overall difficulty. Across all the courses these last couple months there have been a huge number of posts about X is too hard, I'm giving up, "y dunt pr0f mek qestuns ezr?", etc. For the most part they are all in the nature of people who aren't at all invested in their work but feel inclined to voice their problems, sometimes as a complaint or sometimes as a mild attack. I do occasionally go on the forums to answers people's questions but never to ask unless it's a site-specific bug– I'd rather ask someone at school or work, reddit, HN, whatever. What's unfortunate for the professors (or rather, whichever TA is putting together the report on user feedback from the forums) is that their sample will be biased towards people with no background, less resources, etc. It's not necessarily bad as long as they account for it, and I'm sure it's something they think about in terms getting more of the able students to stick around (like in some of the conceptual/theory/adv. topics subforums around).

So I know you're not really arguing here but I just wanted to put that out there since you mentioned the forums. Carry on!