10 Best Online Data Science and Machine Learning Courses (2024)

With AI and data science playing an increasingly crucial role in business, the profession of the data scientist is quickly rising to be one of the most in-demand.

On the other hand, the sheer amount of resources to learn data science can sometimes be overwhelming, especially for someone who wants to enter this field with the goal of starting a data science career.

Likewise, although self-learning and self-practice with free online tutorials and resources is an important part of acquiring skills and confidence, it can sometimes be a struggle and require more time to develop the competencies required by the job market.
See an example of this excellent resource for individuals who need a helping hand to do their math homework and make sure they are getting the necessary practice and skills they need to succeed.

In this article, we review data science courses that have been taken by thousands of students and are provided by trusted institutions in AI, including IBM, Stanford University, and deeplearning.ai.

For those looking to gain more skills to find a job in data science, taking any of the courses listed below can also lead to certifications, which can be used to build credibility when applying for jobs.

Reviews of the best data science courses

Deep Learning Specialization by deeplearning.ai – Editor’s choice

This course focuses on AI and helps to master deep learning. Students will get career advice from top leaders in Deep Learning. The course will help students to find out the best ways to implement their skills in real life.

Instructors of this course are Andrew Ng(CEO/Founder Landing AI, He is the Co-founder of Coursera, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, formerly Chief Scientist at Baidu and founding lead of Google Brain), Kian Katanforoosh(Lecturer of Computer Science at Stanford University, deeplearning.ai and Ecole CentraleSupelec) and Younes Bensouda Mourri(Mathematical & Computational Sciences, Stanford University, deeplearning.ai). All the instructors are experts in the field and have significant influence on the field of deep learning. Overall this course is a best choice for anyone who is interested in deep learning and wants to learn from experts.


Introduction to Data Science Specialization by IBM – Runner up

In this course, students are going to learn data science and foundational level and advanced level which helps them in their career growth. Students will be familiar with many open-source tools and help students to face data science problems. This course provides knowledge of relational database concepts and the use of SQL to query databases. Upon completing the course, students will get the Data Science Specialist Badge from IBM.

Alex Aklson, Polong Lin and Rav Ahuja are the instructors for this course. All of them are working at IBM.

IBM is a reputed company that provides a variety of technology and consulting services, a broad portfolio for collaboration, software development, and system management.


Machine Learning by Stanford University

Customers are happy with the experienced Instructor and the way he teaches the subject. It is clear that Machine learning is an interesting subject and with the proper guidance of the instructor, people feel like they have a solid foundation. The course contains more information than what customers expect from a normal online course. People who don’t know English properly were also able to understand the instructor’s language clearly which makes it easily understandable to anyone.

Andrew Ng(CEO/Founder Landing AI; Co-founder, Coursera; Adjunct Professor, Stanford University; formerly Chief Scientist, Baidu and founding lead of Google Brain) has more than 466K+ followers on Twitter and having many top-rated courses on Coursera, Andrew Ng has good experience in this field and has established a good name in the industry. Based on the customer’s review, it is clear that this course is made for anyone who is interested in the field of Machine learning and is worth what is paid.


Data Science Specialization by Johns Hopkins University

The course aims at developing the specialization of a student in the field of data science. Instructors for this course include Jeff Leek(Ph.D. in Biostatistics, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) is also the co-editor of the Simply Statistics Blog. He has 24K+ followers on Twitter and tweets regarding updates in the field of Data Science. Brian Caffo(Ph.D. professor in the field of Biostatistics) has 13K+ followers on Twitter and 11K+ followers on Youtube. He has uploaded several videos relating to Statistics and other topics on his YouTube channel which viewers can watch free of cost.

Roger D. Peng(Ph.D. in Statistics professor in Biostatistics) has more than 100 videos on his Youtube channel with more than 22K subscribers and he has 42K+ followers on Twitter where he posts about his projects and news which helps his students.

All the instructors are very talented in the field and have received positive feedback from students. The course is offered by Johns Hopkins University which is known for providing specialization and has been teaching for more than 100 years.


Applied Data Science Specialization by IBM

This course can help students to acquire practical skills for real-world data problems. This course can be interesting to anyone who wants to pursue a career in data science. But this course requires students to have foundational skills or complete Introduction to Applied Data Science specialization. This course will help students to learn Python, Data visualization and Data Analysis. Students can get hands-on experience and deal with interesting data problems. Students can get an IBM badge recognizing as Specialist in Applied Data Science.

Instructors of this course are Joseph Santarcangelo(Ph.D. holder and Data Scientist at IBM) and Alex Aklson (Ph.D. holder and Data scientist). They have very good in the field of Data Science and teaching. They have many popular courses on the website which are helping many students to learn Data Science in an easy way. The course is offered by IBM, a very popular company known for its Hardware, Software, Cloud-Based Services, and Cognitive Computing.


Data Science: Foundations using R Specialization by Johns Hopkins University

This course helps students to learn the basics of data science tools and techniques which includes getting, cleaning and exploring data, Programming in R and conducting reproducible research. After completing this course, candidates will be able to take Data Science: Statistics and Machine Learning in which they build a data product using real-world data.

This course is taught by Jeff Leek(Ph.D. holder and he is associate Professor in Biostatistics), Roger D. Peng (Ph.D. holder and he is an associate professor in Biostatistics), Brian Caffo (Ph.D. holder and Professor in Biostatistics). All the instructions are well experienced and they have good experience in teaching. This course is offered by Johns Hopkins University which is a very reputed university known for Neuroscience, Public Health, Computer and Information Science and other courses. Overall this course is well structured and with experienced teachers, it will be definitely beneficial to students.


IBM Data Science Professional Certificate

This course contains 9 sections which provide job-ready skills to students. It covers a wide range of data science topics like open-source tools and libraries, methodologies, Python, Databases, SQL, Data Visualization, Data Analysis and more. The specialty of this course is that anyone who has some basic computer skills and passion for self-learning without any past programming experience. On completion of this course, the student will get a digital badge from IBM recognizing proficiency in Data Science.

Instructors are Joseph Santarcangelo(Ph.D., Data Scientist at IBM), Alex Aklson(Ph.D., Data Scientist), Rav Ahuja(AI and Data Science Program Director at IBM), Saeed Aghabozorgi(Ph.D., Senior Data Scientist), Polong Lin(Data Scientist). All the instructors are in the IBM Developer Skills Network. They are well experienced and are good at teaching Data Science.


Neural Networks and Deep Learning by deeplearning.ai

This course focuses on teaching Deep Learning and helping students understand major technology trends affecting Deep Learning, make them able to build, train and apply fully connected deep neural networks, learn how to implement efficient neural networks, understand key parameters in a neural network’s architecture.

The instructors for this course are 1. Andrew Ng(CEO/Founder of Landing AI, Co-founder of Coursera). He has 11 courses with more than 3.1 million learners.

2.Kian Katanforoosh(Lecturer of Computer Science at Stanford University). He has 5 courses with more than 550K Learners.

3. Younes Bensouda Mourri(Stanford University). He has 6 courses with more than 550K subscribers.

Students are happy with the presenting style of the instructors and the course is easy to follow as it moves from basics to more advanced topics. Example coding exercises can help better understand the importance of vectorization.


Machine Learning with Python by IBM

This course helps students to understand the basics of machine learning using programming language Python. This course can add new skills to students’ resume and they can get a certificate in machine learning.

Saeed Aghabozorgi(Ph.D., Senior Data Scientist) is the instructor for this course who has a good rating on the website. He has a google scholar profile with good viewers and more than 79K learners on Coursera.

This course is offered by IBM which is a well-known company for its research in Hardware, Software, Cloud-based services and more.

Students who took this course are of the opinion that this course is very helpful to anyone as it is well presented and the basics of machine language are explained in an easy way. The video quality is very good and the labs are great. This course is good for a beginner and also intermediate.


Introduction to Data Analysis Using Excel by Rice University

This course is focused on teaching Excel, one of the widely used software in the industry. This course is designed to give a working knowledge of Excel and use it for more advance topics in Business Statistics. the course is well structured and it’s good for beginners who regularly use this software and wish to enhance their skills.

Instructor Sharad Borle(Associate Professor of Management) has a very good rating on the website. He has 5 courses with more than 90K learners. The course is offered by Rice University which is ranked among the top 20 universities in the U.S. and the top 100 in the world. It has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Engineering, Music and many more.

Students are of the opinion that the course is efficiently organized. It’s well suited for beginners and they can have extensive knowledge with confidence. Quizzes are kept for each week which helps test student’s practical knowledge.



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