My favorite was Dan Ariely's Introduction to Irrational Behavior.
Seconded - perhaps not my absolute top favorite but definitely one of the most memorable I've taken.
Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
151–160 of 167 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#152I haven't taken many online courses, but here are my favorites (notice a trend): Andrew Ng's ML Class - This makes the list because it is incredibly useful. I didn't have much background in the field and this class is a practical survey of ideas. Not a ton of depth, but exposes you to a lot of information gently. Daphne Koller's PGM Class - This was the most rewarding. I banged my head on a lot of this material, but…
FYI, the current session of Andrew Ng's ML class starts today.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#153It's not technical but the best I've taken so far is Songwriting on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting Presented by Pat Pattison from Berklee College of Music, I started the course thinking who is this guy? By the end I was hanging off his every word. Even if you've never thought of writing a song it opens your eyes to the talent (and tricks!) in the music business.
I took the "Developing your Musicianship" and "Jazz Improvisation" courses, which I believe are in the same specialisation. The first one was at a very basic level and the improv was one was more advanced, but both were excellent. Highly recommended for aspiring musicians. Good to hear a recommendation for the Songwriting course, thanks, I'll check it out.
I also started Songwriting and Jazz Improvisation, and while both had outstanding content and instruction, the peer-grading of assignments was a complete failure and forced me to quit the coursework timeline. Aside from reviewing others' work being a huge time sink, all feedback I ever got myself was completely useless, like "You did everything in the instructions, but I don't like this" or "Gee, I don't know enough to tell you how to do this any better." I would have gladly paid to get qualified feedback.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took the "Developing your Musicianship" and "Jazz Improvisation" courses, which I believe are in the same specialisation. The first one was at a very basic level and the improv was one was more advanced, but both were excellent. Highly recommended for aspiring musicians. Good to hear a recommendation for the Songwriting course, thanks, I'll check it out.
I also started Songwriting and Jazz Improvisation, and while both had outstanding content and instruction, the peer-grading of assignments was a complete failure and forced me to quit the coursework timeline. Aside from reviewing others' work being a huge time sink, all feedback I ever got myself was completely useless, like "You did everything in the instructions, but I don't like this" or "Gee, I don't know enough…
You're right, I should have mentioned that, as I actually had a similar experience. A lot of the comments I received were also along the lines of "that's great" (when I knew it wasn't and I was actually looking forward to some constructive criticism from someone better than me) or, as you mentioned, the classic "I don't know enough to help you".
Paying for qualified feedback would have made it better, although I still felt like I took a lot away from the taught content.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#155I haven't taken many online courses, but here are my favorites (notice a trend): Andrew Ng's ML Class - This makes the list because it is incredibly useful. I didn't have much background in the field and this class is a practical survey of ideas. Not a ton of depth, but exposes you to a lot of information gently. Daphne Koller's PGM Class - This was the most rewarding. I banged my head on a lot of this material, but…
Wow, that PGM course looks exactly like what I need to get my head around GMs! I'm using Andrew Ng's class to support my learning for my MSc in Data Science, and it's been an invaluable resource. There is nothing like hearing the same material explained by different people to really hammer the topics home, I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that PGM course.
Thanks for these!
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#156KhanAcademy! I would have to say anything on KhanAcademy. Sal Khan just does an incredible job of explaining things. I particularly like his statistics course as a good primer into stats or if you need to quickly brush up on the subject https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability/statistics-infe...
Seconded. Brought my linear algebra and probability theory up to scratch within a day. I don't know what it is about how he explains the material, but it just clicked for me first time, every time.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#157[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#158Duolingo: https://www.duolingo.com/ It's not tech-related, but I have achieved near-fluency in one language in less than a year (Dutch), and I'm currently learning 3-4 others. (Russian, German, French, Italian) I find it very effective and easy to fit in around everyday life. I would definitely recommend it to anyone else seeking to learn languages.
Does anyone know of a course to learn Arabic?
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you living in the Netherlands and/or doing any study outside Duolingo?
You'll have to eventually study outside duolingo if you are serious about learning a language. I would recommend starting with the duolingo course, completing it, then keeping your tree gold while exploring other learning material. Start with children's books and work your way up. There are also a lot of language exchange chat sites that are good to help you get more comfortable speaking a new language, but you will…
Thanks. I was curious because I was using Duolingo to help with my (very rusty) Spanish. I could see that it was helping me to recall vocabulary (and some grammar points) but I didn't see how it would help me improve my listening.
Reading your comment, I thought you had achieved near-fluency in Dutch with just Duolingo, and thought perhaps there was some functionality I had missed!
Thanks for the pointer to ReadLang. The click-to-translate and immediate ability to add to a flashcard list are similar to the features I used most in Pleco (dictionary on steroids) when I first started seriously studying Chinese.
I'll give Readlang a try.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
#160Eric Lander's incredible 'Introduction to Biology - The Secret of Life' was my first step away from data analysis for online marketing clients (which I didn't love) to bioinformatics (which I do very much love) https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-... A Fantastic course from a legendary educator.
I'd like to second this. I had only slight interest in Biology but got completely hooked into the course because the teacher makes things so plausible and exciting. I wish one could do bioinformatics remotely, I'd seriously change careers ;)