Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes | Coursera | The Complete Solution |
Welcome to Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes! You’re about to join thousands of others on a journey towards understanding more about our networked lives.
This course is structured around 20 practical questions about the social, technical, and economic networks that surround us every day. These questions are ones you’ve probably asked at one time or another, such as: How does Google rank webpages? Why is WiFi slower at hotspots than at home? Can you really reach anyone in just six steps?
In each lesson, we will formulate and answer one of these questions, typically going through two of them each week. There will be several quiz questions embedded within the lecture videos to help you test your understanding. At the end of each week, you will be given a homework assignment, which you can self-grade based on the solutions that are provided there for you.
This course will have a midterm exam (after lesson 9) and a final exam (after lesson 20). The midterm will cover the first 9 lessons, roughly one question per lesson, and the final will cover the last 11 lessons, again roughly one question per lesson. These exams are multiple choice in nature, with each question generally more difficult than the in-video quizzes (which are meant to be relatively easy) and less difficult than the homeworks (which are meant to be challenging). To pass the course, you have to get 6 of the 9 midterm exam questions correct and 8 of the 10 final exam questions correct (that is, a total of 14 of the 19 questions have to be correct). Please note that you can repeat both exams if you do not get it right on the first try.
We have prepared material for two different versions of this course: one that goes through mathematical explanations of the material (Networks FMB), and one that does not require an extensive background in mathematics (Networks Illustrated). This offering will be the former, and will require some knowledge of matrices and linear algebra. We will try our best to walk through the details on these when needed, so even if you are not too familiar with them, you may be able to pick them up as we go along.
To begin, take a few minutes to explore the course site. Review the material we’ll cover each week, and click Discussions to see the forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class. Be sure to introduce yourself to everyone in the Meet and Greet forum, too.
If you have any questions, please post them in the forums to get help from others in your learning community. For technical problems with the Coursera platform, visit the Learner Help Center.
Good luck, and happy learning!