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Certificate Or Not

Many members at Coursera deeplearning.ai ask about if a Coursera certificate is something useful. So I want to sum up couple of my thoughts here:

* The most important thing is whether you learn something in the process. And there are many ways to learn. Taking a course is good because usually the course preparer would give you a summary of the field you are interested in.

* So the purpose of certification is mostly a way of motivation so that you can *finish* a class. Note that it is tough to *finish* a class, e.g. Coursera statistics suggest that completion rate is ~9-13%. This number might be smaller at Coursera because it doesn’t cost you much to click the enroll button. But you go to understand finishing a class is no small business. And certification is a way to help you to do so. (Oh, because you paid $ ?)

* Some also ask whether a certificate is useful for resume. It’s hard to say. So for now, there is a short supply of university-trained deep learning experts. If you have a lot of non-traditional experience from Coursera and Kaggle, you do get an edge. But as time goes on, when more learners have achieved status similar to yours, then your edge will fade. So if you think of certificates as part of your resume, be ready to keep on learning.

Arthur

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