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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning by University of Alberta

4.8
stars
2,757 ratings

About the Course

Reinforcement Learning is a subfield of Machine Learning, but is also a general purpose formalism for automated decision-making and AI. This course introduces you to statistical learning techniques where an agent explicitly takes actions and interacts with the world. Understanding the importance and challenges of learning agents that make decisions is of vital importance today, with more and more companies interested in interactive agents and intelligent decision-making. This course introduces you to the fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning. When you finish this course, you will: - Formalize problems as Markov Decision Processes - Understand basic exploration methods and the exploration/exploitation tradeoff - Understand value functions, as a general-purpose tool for optimal decision-making - Know how to implement dynamic programming as an efficient solution approach to an industrial control problem This course teaches you the key concepts of Reinforcement Learning, underlying classic and modern algorithms in RL. After completing this course, you will be able to start using RL for real problems, where you have or can specify the MDP. This is the first course of the Reinforcement Learning Specialization....

Top reviews

YW

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Clear instruction and insightful exercises! Enjoy this course! Also, please read the book if you want to understand better about the course materials and rationales behind the exercises.

MN

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The concepts may sound confusing in the beginning, but as you go forward you find it interesting and understanding. I suggest you completely read the reading assignments before watching the videos.

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551 - 575 of 662 Reviews for Fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning

By Satish C R

Oct 5, 2020

I have definitely learned basics of reinforcement learning by taking the course. In my opinion, to really absorb the material, one needs to read the provided textbook carefully and do the exercises. I suggest doing the some of the textbook programming problems as well to really learn the material. The videos only provide an overview.

By Rishi R

Aug 3, 2020

An amazing course with great insights that drive a new learner in this field want to know more. The only slight drawback I felt was in missing details in implementing the algorithm, which of course the assignments took care of. Yet a good elucidation of the algorithms step-by-step will give a better understanding.

By Arun R

Feb 12, 2020

Great class and I learned a lot - docking one star because the final programming assignment didn't give a comprehensive enough checker inside the Notebook, so I had to keep submitting and look to discussions for help in solving (for really a minor issue that it looks like many students faced on an edge test case).

By J B

Jun 15, 2020

A very well constructed course with two excellent lecturers leading it. A lovely introduction to RL although some may prefer a more mathematical treatment (in which case you need to find a longer course). No tutorial support during the course though so you need to be prepared to sort out your own problems.

By Sebastian T

Feb 22, 2020

Slightly too theoretical but clarified couple loose ideas and enabled me to work with python a bit. although a t the beginning of the course they speak that it is not about python, we actually get a chance using it although indeed we are not getting nice python code examples in course materials.

By Russel C

Feb 15, 2020

Really good introduction to Reinforcement Learning foundations. The lectures were great, and helped translate the theory from the RL book. I would like there to be a few more detailed walk-thru of the update algorithms in week 4, but I was able to work through the programming assignments okay.

By Shashidhara K

Nov 13, 2019

I really sorry for giving 4 star, my only reason for giving 4 star is so you can read this review. Please include some exercise on calculating the equations by hand, with solutions(this is the only reason for 4 star).

Thank you for the course

Course deserves 5 stars.(pardon my 4 stars, sorry)

By Kutlu E Y

Apr 29, 2022

The course is enlightening. However, it requires some sort of pre-exposure to the subject and definitely not a course for novices. The major part of the learning is achieved by reading the book. Lectures are mostly a recap of important ideas in the book and for clarification purposes.

By bob n

Dec 22, 2020

For me, math a bit harder and more opaque than other ML courses I've taken. Even though only a few lines, final programming assignment one of more challenging ones in taking book equations to python implementation. Explanations pretty clear in videos.

By Michael S

Aug 5, 2024

Well structured for a completely automated course. I would have liked to have seen a few more testing cells in the programming assignments that tested intermediate results because you one is complete on there own in terms of figuring out problems.

By Lucas L

Apr 8, 2021

Great course with interesting material and good examples. The only reason for rating 4 and not 5 is because I feel that programming assignments are a little too easy. Maybe they could benefit from letting the student implement more parts.

By Dror L

Jul 31, 2020

Clear and pleasant recorded presentations. Very good and precise reading materials. Time estimate for reading materials are super optimistic. Guest lectures are at best inspiring. No real value. They are unfocused and all over the place.

By Ed J

Apr 25, 2020

I think the course was well put together and the labs were clear. My only real complaint is that the book and tests spent a lot of time proving and manipulating equations. I am mostly interested in using the formulas and programming.

By Aresh B

Jan 13, 2021

The coding assignments are a bit confusing. If you expand on coding assignment and probably provide a more step by step instruction as how the functions are being defined, or how the environments are created it would be way better.

By Alper A

Mar 29, 2020

Course is fine, but there could be more coding practices then the theoretical part. There are two coding assignments which are hard to do only with the course. The course context could be extended to include more coding practices.

By Victor C B

Aug 22, 2022

Good course. The bulk of the content learned is in the textbook. The quizzes were sometimes a bit tricky with wording but it might have been because I wasn't careful enough. I feel excited to start the next course in this series!

By Ayse E G

Sep 28, 2019

The course is a very good introduction to RL but the concepts are handled a little too abstractly. However this provides an excellent fundamental for the rest of the courses. I would have liked more programming exercises.

By Mauri K

Nov 23, 2020

A very useful and also rather compact course. I can recommend to anyone interested in the subject matter. I did expect a little bit more hands-on action (ie. more concrete, yet still simple examples in the coding side).

By Jihun Y

Mar 13, 2022

This course covers fundamentals of reinforcement learning from a book, "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" and that is a good thing; however, the course asks you to study by yourself by reading the book.

By Aravind M

Oct 26, 2020

A really good introductory course to RL. The instructors have structured the course in the same manner as in the specified textbook (which is also great), so it's easy to follow them both at the same time.

By Aaron H

Sep 10, 2019

Great material, and awesome coding exercises. Some additional information or context around a few of the problems would have been great, but nonetheless the struggle allowed me to grow in my knowledge!

By Aboozar R

Oct 28, 2020

The video lectures were very short and just a repetition of the book itself. After we studied the book, the lectures didn't have anything new for us. They should have been different and more hands-on.

By Aidan M

Aug 23, 2020

Don't think it would be unreasonable to have more demanding coding assignments where all functions are made from scratch (though the function names and some comments might be provided as an outline.

By Kunal S

Aug 9, 2023

nice material. really breaks down hard concepts into easy to digest chunks. However, you will have to read the book to answer questions and delivery method of instructor could have been better

By Ulf Ä

Jan 3, 2021

The book is essential reading. It took me longer than the estimates to do the reading and the programming assignments. I would have liked more gridworld examples to get a faster hang of it.