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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Behavioral Finance by Duke University

4.4
stars
3,863 ratings

About the Course

We make thousands of decisions every day. Do I cross the road now, or wait for the oncoming truck to pass? Should I eat fries or a salad for lunch? How much should I tip the cab driver? We usually make these decisions with almost no thought, using what psychologists call “heuristics” – rules of thumb that enable us to navigate our lives. Without these mental shortcuts, we would be paralyzed by the multitude of daily choices. But in certain circumstances, these shortcuts lead to predictable errors – predictable, that is, if we know what to watch out for. Did you know, for example, that we are naturally biased towards selling investments that are doing well for us, but holding on to those that are doing poorly? Or that we often select sub-optimal insurance payment plans, and routinely purchase insurance that we don’t even need? And why do so many of us fail to enroll in our employer’s corporate retirement plans, even when the employer offers to match our contributions? Behavioral finance is the study of these and dozens of other financial decision-making errors that can be avoided, if we are familiar with the biases that cause them. In this course, we examine these predictable errors, and discover where we are most susceptible to them. This course is intended to guide participants towards better financial choices. Learn how to improve your spending, saving, and investing decisions for the future....

Top reviews

SK

Feb 25, 2020

Good course! There is just one thing I would improve here - an explanation of the mistakes after the tests are done. This improvement should increase the student`s understanding of specific topics.

M

May 2, 2018

This course was a very good sum up of Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. Definitely recommend to everyone who would like to know more about our flaws or would like to refresh your knowledge.

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826 - 850 of 986 Reviews for Behavioral Finance

By Elizabeth T

Dec 23, 2016

I very much enjoyed the information contained in the course - however I did find that it was difficult to apply some of the very nuanced biases to the financial problems posed in the quiz when many of the biases were used in examples outside of the stock market in the course readings leading up to the quiz. I really wish there were more examples for each bias (and more from the world of finance) because some biases were really hard to distinguish from one another. On one hand I did like that I wasn't spoon fed the information for the quizes but on the other I don't feel as though I was fully equipped to answer some of the quiz questions due to the way the information had been presented.

The information built on itself so I found myself going back to week 1 information and week 2 information in week three.

By Puneet G

Apr 16, 2020

The course gives you a nice introduction into the world of behavioural finance but fails to take it any further. There isn't a lot of in-depth theory about the various biases that have been mentioned which sometimes makes it difficult to completely grasp them. Also, the first-week quiz had answer explanations with it, which is IMO very useful; the second and third-week quizzes fail to provide any such help. Because of this and lack of participation in the discussion forums, it becomes very difficult to understand some questions. Overall, I had some fun while doing this course, behavioural finance is a field in which I wanted to dive in for a long time, and this course actually gave me a good start. So for everyone who's looking to learn something about it, I would suggest you give it a chance.

By Kaushal V

Feb 1, 2020

The concepts presented in the course were all exciting, interesting and helpful. The faculty seemed knowledgable on the subject. And this inspired confidence in me as I began. However, I found that the video material was underwhelming in that it did not do justice to the depth of the reading material provided. The reading material left me with questions, which I hoped would be clarified in the videos, but that did not happen. I often saw myself referring to YouTube to seek explanations. I often struggled to find reliable definitions of the terminology used in the course. And that did not help when I was doing the quiz. Many concepts from the quiz were simply left out from the course (e.g. Stages in a bubble). I had to do exhaustive googling in order to answer the questions in the quiz.

By Marcel M d A P

Apr 28, 2020

A comprehensive list of biases in the content was selected. The professors are very good at explaining the content in the video lessons. However, there were just too few of them and too much to read on our own. Also the written material explain biases and effects in a bit of a complicated manner. At the end of the reading, usually I didn't know what was theory, what was a bias and what was an"effect" or a fallacy. When a bias relates to another bias, sometimes a famous one not originated in the behavioral finance theory, then it get even more confusing. Even with those issues, I liked the course and would love to have personal classes with the professors some day. Duke university seems to be really top notch.

By Juan C

Jul 1, 2018

This course gives you a basic understanding of the main financial biases. Everything is shown mostly through examples which, in general, are very interesting. However, in my opinion, the course is very disorganized. Instead of devoting a single section to one topic, topics are spread through several several pdf's. This makes it very difficult to review one topic, as you have no other choice but to glance through all the pdf's to view the material on a single topic. Also, the videos are kind of irrelevant as they simply and very briefly summarize parts of the pdf's that you have already seen without providing any additional content or value.

By Soon M Y

Jul 5, 2020

I think that the material was fairly straightforward, but the process of teaching it felt like it can be improved. There are many nuances in the definitions, and i don't think there was enough time spent discussing these nuances. Subsequent quizzes throw questions at you in hopes that you remember these nuances, but don't do much to help you understand what you've gotten wrong. The same can be said across some of the material where the notes themselves have random questions, but if you don't understand or know the answer, there's no easy way to find out what you misunderstood.

By Michael T

Jul 23, 2021

Some great content covered here and I enjoyed the exercises throughout that invited me to use own behaviour as a learning tool.

That said, there are a lot of concepts introduced here in quick succession without clarity. It would be good to present them more clearly in groupings or an overview that could be reinforced throughout. The quiz sections we're also very difficult to follow, and I still don't understand why some answers were incorrect. It was especially difficult to do the last quiz as the web pages included in the reading material no longer work.

By Ashot B

Apr 19, 2020

On the one hand, such a course is highly demanded and needed, for obvious reasons. However, this particular course is a subject of further and considerable development, in my opinion, of course. 1. I was confused by all this new terminology. While I well informed about many things discussed and clearly understood the explanations, the terms themselves caused a lot of problems. 2. the manner of speech of the second teacher is not student-friendly. So, as a first step ok, but I rather avoid DUKE courses in future,,,

By Samuel N

Jan 12, 2020

I liked the material given throughout the course. Interesting examples were chosen to help us understand the cognitive biases that include decision making, and the lecture slides were very helpful.

My one gripe is that the quizzes did not give enough feedback. The last quiz seemed to have some material that was not covered in the course, and there was little to no feedback for the answers.

Overall, I would recommend this course to a friend on the condition that more feedback be given for the quizzes.

By Abhinut S

Aug 26, 2019

I believed that the original length of this course is more than 3 weeks (the instructor even mentioned that the course is 14 weeks!?). The reason I point this out is because some of the questions in the quizzes does not cover in the lectures videos of the course. Hence, from my point of view, the quizzes is quite difficult even if you have completed all the lecture videos. Moreover, it would be great if the course have more than one instructor, otherwise it feel like a monologue.

By Nishant V S

May 13, 2020

Course material was inadequate. Certain biases were not explained properly with relevant examples. Quiz question were based on such biases & so it made it difficult for me to solve the quiz. Quiz answer explanations were not given. How are we supposed to know the reasoning behind correct answers without the explanations ? Please make these improvements.

Apart from that I learnt quite a lot of basics from this course. It is now my duty to explore these topics further in-depth

By Ojhal t

Oct 11, 2021

I absolutely loved the course, it was interesting, intriguing, and really fun. This is a relatively newer dimension to economics and finance and I enjoyed it thoroughly. However, I wish the quiz answer reports could've been much more informative with greater explanation and justifications, and might this course would have extended to further weeks. The weekly quiz needs to be improved with more notes. Hope to see many such courses up the sleeves ahead.

By Akshay S

Jun 23, 2018

In week 2 and 3, there is no explanation for which quiz answer is wrong and which right. It reduces the value of the course drastically, because the actual application of the learnings is not validated. This is even worse because for many questions, I wasn't 100% sure about the answer and was doubting between multiple answers (for both those where I answered right and wrong).The material as such is very interesting but it could have been so much better.

By Hon K Y

May 12, 2022

Most of the learnings is carried out by self-reading powerpoint material & lots of googling. Few videos and they are snippets of sections in the powerpoint. Quizzes frequently test application-based questions + concepts not discussed in powerpoint slides. For Quiz 2 & 3, no feedback/explanation was given on why the particular option is incorrect. Interesting content and material but could have been presented in a better way to aid understanding.

By Duppala S H

Jun 7, 2020

The course is good to an extent in view of the video lectures and Pdf provided. But the flow of the course is not uniform at all and we get easily confused with the flow. Also, the videos and pdf are a lot different from the quizzes present and it is really difficult to do the quizzes without prior knowledge. The course appears like a pdf reading course with very little explanation. So it is really difficult to get ahead in the course.

By Emerson Y

Apr 17, 2020

A good intro to the subject with generally helpful examples. But the learner is on their own when it comes to figuring out the math and sorting out the various concepts (zero teacher support/presence). Course content suggestions: 1. explore the criticisms of behavioural finance or why the traditionalists are still holding out; 2. greater focus on applications and how to counteract biases (rather than just classification of biases)

By Aastha M

Dec 17, 2017

Although the course was an eye opener and insightful, there are a couple of things that I strongly believe could have been done better to improve the learning experience.First , solution and explanation sheet for all the quizzes is a must. Second, there were certain convoluted topics which could have been better addressed through video lecture. Overall as a subject the course definitely sparked my interest to continue further.

By Arya B

Apr 29, 2020

The questions in the quizzes require a lot of critical thinking that is not covered thoroughly in the video lectures. If you take this course for a certificate, then you might have to repeat the quizzes several times to pass the course. The lecture pdfs are very informative and are encouraging me to dive deeper into the subject. If problem-solving is given adequate attention, then it will be a fine course indeed.

By A. G S

May 1, 2020

Course content is great but course is mostly based on long reading slides. Too less video material, makes harder to understand. Estimated course duration is wrong, readings are all prescribed as 10 minutes as default but takes too much time; misleading. I liked the content, the quizes (quizes were hard and made me understand better); however I guess course should be improved with more videos and less readings.

By Ved B

Apr 10, 2020

They study material of the course could have been a bit more detailed. It was difficult to remember different kinds of behavioral biases all at one go. Also, after a point of time, it becomes difficult to differentiate between some biases. Instructors are humbly requested to elaborate much more on each of the biases during the videos. I personally found the explanation in the videos very abrupt and short.

By adyasha p

Jun 26, 2020

The course was interesting but lacked interactive material. It would be better if they would have added more of video content and examples explained by the instructors. There were no answers given to the assignments for the week 2 and week 3, which made it more difficult to get anything out of the questions. Duke and Coursera should really consider to improve the teaching material of this course!

By RITIKA M 1

May 26, 2020

The course was highly stimulating and informative. However, for a course that preaches behavioural sciences, it sure seems quite obtuse while applying some of those principles in the MOOC itself. Since most of the course is in write-ups or readings, it is not particularly accessible or easy to comprehend for everyone. They could definitely make the course more engaging with more videos.

By Drew M

Dec 22, 2022

The material was fascinating but it felt incomplete with some material. Particularly with the early graphing in the Utility of Money, I would have wanted more information on how to calculate this in real world scenarios. Many others noted that there was no explanation given for the quizzes in weeks 2 & 3 making it difficult to understand what you may have gotten wrong, and why.

By Nick N

Apr 27, 2019

Although the material is fascinating, the course seems like it was put together in a couple days with no regard to proper structure. The videos are very, very short and many of the quiz questions seem irrelevant--namely week 3's. I really like the material and I plan on taking another class on Behavioral Finance, though I can not recommend this course as a the best option.

By Michelle S H S

Feb 9, 2022

This is a very interesting course, however I was quite disappointed as there is very little explanation in the handouts are vague - mostly are examples with very few explanation on terminology. The quiz provided are very difficult compared to the handouts given, basically you got to read from other websites for more details to get the correct answer for the quiz.