Bioinformatics Algorithms

Finally, I have completed the Bioinformatics Algorithms (Part-1) course at coursera. I enrolled this course on last November, 2013. But, I could not finish it due to workload both in daily life and in the course. The course design is favorable for a newcomer to bionformatics. The instructors described important problems in genomics, and gave the intuition behind the solutions. They explained the solutions step by step so that a student can learn how a bioinformatician should approach to a problem. They stated the most naive solution, then identified its drawbacks, and improved it. They also showed how biology-informed models can improve the solutions.

A good thing to note that it stated some of the open problems in bioinformatics at the end of each chapters. Those problems are hard. Yet, they give a glimpse of the difficulty level of current research topics in bioinformatics. After completing this course, I am now confident that I know at least a little about bioinformatics. I realized that I have to study hard, especially I have to study biology, to make me competent to deal with biological problems. I realized once again that the key to be successful in this area is the capability to connect biology with computing.

The assignments are a vital part of the course. These assignments forced the students to DO the job, instead of just knowing it. I solved each assignment using either R or Python. I started with R, as I was familiar with it. Later, found that R is slow, particularly if you cannot avoid looping (using for). I often struggled to find a solution within the 5-minutes duration given for a problem. Then I started learning and using Python. To my surprise, I found that Python is pretty fast and its syntaxes are quite powerful. Especially, I liked list comprehension and lambda expression in Python.

I also started using github to store my codes on a regular basis. Although I had a github account before, I seldom used it. This time, I stored all the solutions at github. Here is the repository.