5 Free Courses to Learn Data Science and Machine Learning in 2024

These are the best free Coursera courses to learn essential Data Science skills like Data Analysis, SQL, Data Visualization, and important Python libraries like matplotlib

javinpaul
Javarevisited
9 min readOct 10, 2021

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5 Best Free Coursera Courses for Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers

Hello guys, if you want to become a Data Scientist or Machine Learning Engineer in 2024 and want to learn Data Science on Coursera but looking for free Coursera Courses for Data Science then you have come to the right place.

Earlier, I have shared both the best Coursera courses for Data Science as well as 15 Free Coursera courses where I have shared few free Data Science courses but many of you asked more,

Hence, I have created this article where I have shared the 5 best free Coursera courses for Data Science. These courses have been chosen from top universities like Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan as well as famous tech companies like IBM.

You can audit these courses for FREE to learn key Data Science concepts in 2021.

Most people thought they need a fortune of money to study in a university and get a degree in data science to have the skills needed for the job, but actually, they don’t have to.

The demand for qualified data scientists has risen, and many companies care about your skills and what value you will get from you more than the degree you had from the university.

Still, if you have a degree from a university in data science, it will be better also to learn this field in practice.

Many online courses will help you achieve this goal, and one of the best platforms known as Coursera, with courses in almost everything, not just data science, and they are FREE of charge. But you must pay if you want to have a certificate.

In this article, I have curated a list of the best Coursera courses for learning data science and improve your skills even if you already working in this field.

They aim to target beginners and intermediates Data Science practitioners but even if you know Data Science, you can use these free online courses to fill gaps in your learning. They are taught by experts and there is always something to learn.

5 Best Data Science and Machine Learning Courses and Certification on Coursera in 2024

Here is my list of free Coursera courses you can join to learn about Data Science. This list includes free courses to learn Data Science basics, programming languages like Python and R Programming, SQL, Data Science tools, and libraries like NumPy, Sci-kit Learn, matplotlib, etc.

1. Introduction to Data Science in Python [Free]

This is one of the most popular free courses to learn Data Science in Python on Coursera. More than 614,000 people have joined this free course to learn Data Science. It’s an ideal course for beginners and this course should be taken first if you are planning to learn python and data science simultaneously.

You will start learning the fundamentals of python, like data types and functions, and move to read data from CSV files and numeric calculations using the NumPy library.

Next, you will see how to use simple commands of pandas like indexing and handling missing values. You will move to more complex commands of the panda’s library, like merging data frames, generate summary tables.

Finally, get your hands on the statistics such as distributions and other forms of structured data. Talking about social proof, more than 624,000 people have already joined this free course.

Here is the link to join this free course — Introduction to Data Science in Python

best free Data Science course on Coursera

This course is offered by the University of Michigan of the US and it’s also part of the Applied Data Science with Python Specialization which you can join if you want a certification in Data Science from Coursera.

2. R Programming by Johns Hopkins University

One of the popular programming languages used among Data scientists is the R Programming language. This is another popular free Coursera course for Data scientists which will teach you how to use R programming for Data Science.

In this course, you will install and configure the R studio IDE on different environments such as macOS and Windows, then start learning the R data types like vectors & lists, matrices, factors, data frames.

Next, you will see control structures like the if statements, for loops, while loops, and scooping rules. Later, you will cover the loop functions such as apply that loop over the lists, apply, split, and the debugging tools like diagnosing the problem and more.

Finally, learn how to simulate data in R language and learn how to generate random numbers and simulate linear models. In short, one of the best Johns Hopkins courses to learn R Programming for Data Science.

Talking about social proof, more More than 629,000 people have already joined this Coursera course which tells a lot about the popularity of this course.

Here is the link to join this course R Programming by Johns Hopkins University

best free R programming course on Coursera

This course is also part of Coursera and Johns Hopkin’s popular Data Science Specialization which is a great program to Launch Your Career in Data Science. A ten-course introduction to data science developed and taught by leading professors.

3. Databases and SQL for Data Science with Python

This is another popular free Coursera course for Data scientists. This free course from IBM and taught by Ravi Ahuja will teach you SQL, an essential tool for Data Science. SQL language is also widely used among data scientists to fetch data from the database for analysis purposes.

In this free course, you will learn basic SQL statements and practice them on a live database such as SELECT & INSERT statements. You will then understand the database relationship and the concepts behind them, and how to create tables.

Next, you will learn how to use string patterns and rangers and sort resulting sets and group resulting sets. You will also discover the built-in database functions. Later, you will learn how to access the database using the python language, like creating tables and load data.

Finally, you will see some advanced commands of SQL for the data engineers. More than 205000 people have joined this course to learn SQL for Data Science on Coursera.

Here is the link to join this courseDatabases and SQL for Data Science with Python

best free Database and SQL course on Coursera

This course is also part of IBM’s famous Data Science Fundamentals with Python and SQL Specialization which is a great program to build the foundation for your Data Science career and develop hands-on experience with Jupyter, Python, SQL. Perform Statistical Analysis on real data sets.

4. Applied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python

Data visualization and extract meaningful insights into your data is the main purpose and job for data scientists. You will understand the principle of information visualization.

Then you will dive into the charts using real-world data and create graphs like a scatterplot, line plots, bar charts using matplotlib.

This course is also part of the Applied Data Science with Python Specialization, one of the popular certifications on Coursera for Data Science.

You will also explore the charts fundamentals and implementing new visualization charts like subplots, histograms, box plots, and heatmaps.

Finally, you will also see how to use pandas library and, data visualization libraries like matplotlib and other data visualization is known as seaborn for statistical visualization.

Here is the link to join this courseApplied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python

best free Data Visualization course on Coursera

5. Applied Machine Learning in Python

Predicting data scientists in created using the machine learning algorithms and models. This course will begin with the fundamentals of machine learning and the sci-kit-learn library and see how to apply classification using the K-Nearest Neighbors.

You will also learn about supervised learning and how to apply classification and regression, overfitting & underfitting, logistic regression, support vector machine.

Then you will evaluate and optimize the performance of the model. Finally, you will dep dive more into advanced supervised learning such as random forests and neural networks.

The course is also part of the Applied Data Science with Python Specialization and offered by one of the top US universities, the University of Michigan.

In short, one of the best free Coursera courses to learn Machine Learning using Python. More than 237K students have already joined this course and you can join as well.

Here is the link to join this courseApplied Machine Learning in Python

best free Machine Learning course on Coursera

That’s all about the best free Data Science Courses from Coursera for Beginners. By the way, Data science is more than just taking some courses and call yourself a data scientist.

Still, you have to learn statistics and practice more and more on real-world datasets to be qualified to get a position in a company for making decisions for them through data.

While taking these free Coursera courses will not make you Data Scientist but they will guide you and teach you key skills needed to start your career in Data Science, you need to do the hard work to apply the knowledge you learn.

By the way, if you like Coursera courses and certification then I also suggest you join Coursera Plus, a subscription program from Coursera which gives you access to more than 7000+ top Coursera courses and unlimited certification for just $59/month.

Other Coursera and Programming Articles you may like

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these best free Coursera courses for Data Science and Machine Learning in 2024 then, please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S. — If you like to learn from Udemy courses and you are looking for the best Data Science course on Udemy then I highly recommend you to join this Data Science Bootcamp 2024 course on Udemy. This is one of the most comprehensive courses with 28.5 hours of learning and more than 400K students have joined this already.

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javinpaul
Javarevisited

I am Java programmer, blogger, working on Java, J2EE, UNIX, FIX Protocol. I share Java tips on http://javarevisited.blogspot.com and http://java67.com