Ratings and Reviews for Data Science Ethics

I've been disappointed with the course overall. it's a very interesting topic, one that's relevant to the times we live in. But I feel that many of the big questions are neither asked nor answered in the course. The presenter's background is in engineering, not philosophy. This isn't a fundamental problem in itself, but it does mean that concepts are left very vaguely defined. So 'ethics' is, at one point, defined more or less as 'what's socially agreed-up'. But in the questions as well as the videos, the terminology shifts between 'ethically right/wrong', 'appropriate', 'have to do something,' 'by rights', 'legally', and lots more besides. So it's far from clear what the right or wrong position might be in many of the thought-experiments described in the quiz questions. What's more, if an action isn't in itself ethically right, that doesn't entail that it must be ethically wrong: it could be neither. There's virtually no input from other voices, too: no discussions with, say, experts in the field of data ethics, or moral philosophers, or whatever. At one point in week 1, the presenter correctly points out that ''data ownership is really complex''. So it'd be useful to have a MOOC that makes it less complex: that asks hard questions, and critically examines the range of possible answers. Unfortunately, this MOOC isn't it.

This is a good intro to the topic for data scientists with no prior background in ethics. As someone who has studied the philosophy of ethics (even if you've only taken one course in it) you'll likely be disappointed in the limited level of depth in terms of considering ethical theories. To be fair, the instructor does state this at the beginning of the course. My other issue I had with this course is that the assessment quizzes use true or false questions - which in my opinion represents a VAST simplification of the complexities of ethical questions. This kind of simplified black and white thinking is exactly what we do NOT want in the people creating and controlling our technology, so I was disappointed to see the assessment style encouraging it.

I liked this course very much and Data Science Ethics explained very nice manner. I will recommend to join this course.

The course provides a good insight into some of the issues with the ethics of data science. Perhaps there is too much focus on data validity and not enough on ethics. This course shows that there is a need for systematic ethical enquiry into this subject.

This couse presented some interesting case studies, but never presented a real ethical system. In particular, the instructor frequently equated ethical behavior with socially acceptable behavior (this activity by corporation x was unethical because it resulted in public outcry). Someone with a background in ethics really should have been consulted in course developement. On a purely practical matter, the ta did not seem to have any training in ethics at all. He just responded to every comment in the discussion area with a "what about" statement that sounded like it came straight from a late night dorm room bs session.

Definitely a good choice fo the beginners in this topic. Highly recommended for the Europeans as the American regulations differ and the course covers most of them. Interesting reading materials that encourage to do research on your own.

I like to think I'm an ethical person, but this course challenged me about some biases I hadn't even considered. It's a well presented course that won't demand that you put hours and hours in every week.

Very informative and enough case studies to show examples. Highly recommended for data scientists.