Ratings and Reviews for The Finite Element Method for Problems in Physics

I was expecting learning how to apply finite element as an engineer and designer, instead the course is about the mathematics & programming of the finite element method.

I really like the lectures of this course. But on the other hand this programming assignments are... I am not able to see why using such a complicated main code template is useful to understand the principals of the finite element method. I spend 5 hours for trying to install all the libraries and finding the correct header files of deal.II and this visualization thing which is needed in the write_output.h file). Because otherwise you will not be able to compile the code. This is not the first time I did installation of complicated code in unix and I know by heart this can be cumbersome sometimes. But why doing this for a simple programming assignment. I started this course because I want to learn about finite element method and not how to install deal.II software. But exactly installing is what the first assignment is about it is not about coding what will be only a small fraction of the whole assignment then. And the next thing is there is not only one person facing this troubles there are quite a lot if you look in the discussion forums. On the other hand if there would be sufficient help given for the installation it would be fine, but it is not. The only help which is given are sending some links which is nice. But links I can also watch by myself. So I really liked this course and found it interesting ( or I still find it interesting ), but I don't see what learn effect I should have from messing around with those deal.II libraries.

good for learning.

I've encountered very few courses that demonstrate the detailed connection between what we learn in theory and applying them in programming languages. The instructions on programming assignments are limpid, can get through them even with very little programming experience.

This is a good intro course which introduce the Finite Element Method step by step, which suited me perfectly since I hardly coded in c++ nor did FEM before. Nevertheless, as a graduate student, the pace is very slow, and the outline and motivation unclear, which would likely have discouraged me if I did not review video in x2, and stuck to second week lectures and onward. I would advise to introduce more outline and motivation at the beginning of the week lecture to keep students motivated. Apart from that, I recommand the course !

It is very well structured and Dr Krishna Garikipati helps me understand the course in very simple manner. I would like to thank coursera community for making this course available.

A rigorous and organized introduction to the subject with the additional benefit of learning through implementation.

Very weak presentation. Must be improved to keep attention.

This was a great course, I can only recommend. The tutor really explains basically all that there is to linear PDEs. What I miss, maybe as a different course is the case of nonlinear equations.

good for improving skills