[notimetorelax]

It is not such a huge problem when you take several courses at once. Sadly they run them only twice a year, each time I try to follow as many as possible. I cannot follow PGM because it requires too much of my time, I'd have to abandon 2 or 3 other courses. YMMV.

[tomku]

I'm looking at the same problem at the moment. PGM sounds really interesting, but I think that the time investment just isn't going to be workable for me unless I drop several of my other classes. My current plan is to watch the PGM videos and try to keep up with the programming assignments as long as I can, but if it comes down to a choice of one or the other, PGM will be the one to go.

As far as "dumbing down", I've found that the Coursera classes that I've taken (Compilers, Automata Theory, Algorithms 1, SaaS and Machine Learning) have varied in difficulty quite widely. Compilers and Automata were both challenging and enjoyable, Algorithms 1 was about what I'd expect from a freshman/sophomore algorithms class and SaaS and Machine Learning were easy enough that they should be approachable to anyone with basic programming experience.

I don't feel that the difficulty in the classes that I've taken had any particular correlation with teaching effectiveness. I found Andrew Ng's ML class to be simple, but still interesting and informative - you come out of it with enough of a basic understanding to implement simple ML techniques as well as a place to start if you wish to learn more. I think that while a theory-centric class would be a nice thing to have, he's done an amazing job of making a class that can appeal to a wide range of potential students and introduce them to a field that's usually very difficult to approach.