Trouble with nested tables

Question

I am using nested table environments in the following snippet:

\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{rX lX}

  COURSEWORK & Machine Learning, Probabilitistic Learning, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Intermediate Statistics A \& B, Statistical Methodology I \& II, Statistical Computing, Information Retreival, Principles of Data Management, Data Structures, Computer Architecture\\
 \\*
  COURSEWORK & \begin{tabular}{ l l l }
   Machine Learning & Probabilistic Learning & Probabilistic Graphical Models \\
   Intermediate Statistics & Statistical Computing & Statistical Methods \\
   Principles of Data  & Data Structures & Computer Architecture \\
  \end{tabular}\\

\end{tabularx}

which produces following document:

Now, there are three issues with this rendering:

1. The tabular listing of courses seems to have extra indentation (note the entries are already left justified) &
2. The section title 'COURSEWORK' for the tabular listing appears in front of middle row, I would like it to start from the top of the tabular listing. I tried using \multirow but it does not take the section title above the middle row.

Please suggest how these can be achieved.

Answer 1

Remove the \tabcolsep length at the beginning and at the end of the tabulars using @{}; the alignment issue can be corrected using t for the optional argument of tabular:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{} r X l X @{}}
  COURSEWORK & Machine Learning, Probabilitistic Learning, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Intermediate Statistics A \& B, Statistical Methodology I \& II, Statistical Computing, Information Retreival, Principles of Data Management, Data Structures, Computer Architecture\\
 \\*
  COURSEWORK & \begin{tabular}[t]{@{} l l l @{} }
   Machine Learning & Probabilistic Learning & Probabilistic Graphical Models \\
   Intermediate Statistics & Statistical Computing & Statistical Methods \\
   Principles of Data  & Data Structures & Computer Architecture \\
  \end{tabular}\\
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}