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MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

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Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#51

Post by austenallred »

opportune wrote: post #49

The problem with a website such as this one is that they just compile a list of content, each of which is quite large/involved, and throw it at you. Not only is this kind of overwhelming, but I wonder how many people actually use a page like this to construct a curriculum for themselves. I doubt it's very many at all. There's too much friction: you have to continue revisiting the page after you complete all of these…

The bigger problem in my mind (and I'm biased) is that these courses aren't designed to run together. They assume different knowledge and seemingly random levels of ability when you're taking them as one-offs. The hard part is mapping it all out and finding the holes. There's no continuity.

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#53

Post by crpatino »

bronz wrote: post #43
harrygeez wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about conceptual knowledge like computer science is there are many nuances to it and the only way to get a reasonably complete picture is to read from various sources told in different ways by different authors. What you are suggesting may seem like a good idea but humans will always try to be lazy when they can, and a universal free textbook make it almost too easy for them. In reality, everyone's gonna re…

the nice thing about such a book (or series of books) is that the net number of experts could only rise, because this is an additional (and very powerful) source of information for people to use who are inclined to become experts. also, there would be a huge increase in the number of non-experts or amateurs. this is a good thing because even having a hazy idea of how things work is more beneficial to ones ability to…

This, as many other things, is a people problem.

The number of experts in CS is not constrained by availability of resources (though that might not be the case for every field), but the number of people that have: 1. a minimum of inteligence to get through it, and 2. The motivation and determination to strive at reaching expert level over a long period of time.

So, throwing more resources at this will only marginally increase with the production of experts. Maybe it will lower the bar of #1 a bit, but the bottleneck is really in #2 and the people that are not willing to work hard and keep working hard despite apparent failure will drop off anyways.

It is the same with open source community. By now, we should be literally swiming in free software. Instead, what happened is that society use of open source increased, but hackers willing to volunteer their time remained the same or even diminished over the years (every kid dreams with being an entrepraeneur and hit it rich these days, nobody wants to be a dirty hippy anymore). The slack has been picked up by paid employees from sponsor companies instead.

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#54

Post by rl3 »

opportune wrote: post #49

The problem with a website such as this one is that they just compile a list of content, each of which is quite large/involved, and throw it at you. Not only is this kind of overwhelming, but I wonder how many people actually use a page like this to construct a curriculum for themselves. I doubt it's very many at all. There's too much friction: you have to continue revisiting the page after you complete all of these…

As another comment suggested, this is pretty much the Khan Academy model up to and including YouTube videos.

That said, Khan Academy's execution is positively ancient. Videos can certainly be more concise. Vi Hart's YouTube channel is a fantastic example of what constitutes (in my opinion) the upper bounds of concise YouTube educational videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Vihart

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#55

Post by jmstfv »

opportune wrote: post #49

The problem with a website such as this one is that they just compile a list of content, each of which is quite large/involved, and throw it at you. Not only is this kind of overwhelming, but I wonder how many people actually use a page like this to construct a curriculum for themselves. I doubt it's very many at all. There's too much friction: you have to continue revisiting the page after you complete all of these…

Have you seen Metacademy? Here is a "tech-tree" for recurrent neural networks [0]. In the top-left corner you can switch between "graph" and "list" mode. Unfortunately, site hasn't been updated for some time. However, they have open sourced their code and I was thinking maybe we (volunteers) could pick up where they left off and continue this initiative. Previous discussion [2].

Edit: added previous discussion to the list.

[0] https://metacademy.org/graphs/concepts/recurrent_neural_netw...

[1] https://github.com/metacademy/metacademy-application

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617683

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#57

Post by ErikBjare »

opportune wrote: post #49

The problem with a website such as this one is that they just compile a list of content, each of which is quite large/involved, and throw it at you. Not only is this kind of overwhelming, but I wonder how many people actually use a page like this to construct a curriculum for themselves. I doubt it's very many at all. There's too much friction: you have to continue revisiting the page after you complete all of these…

I've had a similar idea. Been gathering my notes on it here: https://github.com/ErikBjare/KnowTree/

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#58

Post by srikz »

znpy wrote: post #24

As a cs-savvy person, I'd really love to see similar pages but for other fields. Computer science is probably one of the most over-documented fields. Everyone seems to have compiled a list of resources at least once in their life, like a rite of passage. I'd love to see open source curricula for Economics/Business, Physics, Music, Literature and other stuff.

As someone mentioned below, maybe https://learn-anything.xyz is close to what you are looking for.

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#59

Post by vanillapepsi »

carapace wrote: post #52
Thrasolt wrote: post #18

Hi guys. MindWeb is the project of a friend and me. I just wanted to apologize for the loading time. We just launched our beta and we were not prepared for this much traffic!

Your site doesn't work with JS disabled.

Like who gives a shit?

Re: MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum

#60

Post by lypextin »

jmstfv wrote: post #55
opportune wrote: post #49

The problem with a website such as this one is that they just compile a list of content, each of which is quite large/involved, and throw it at you. Not only is this kind of overwhelming, but I wonder how many people actually use a page like this to construct a curriculum for themselves. I doubt it's very many at all. There's too much friction: you have to continue revisiting the page after you complete all of these…

Have you seen Metacademy? Here is a "tech-tree" for recurrent neural networks [0]. In the top-left corner you can switch between "graph" and "list" mode. Unfortunately, site hasn't been updated for some time. However, they have open sourced their code and I was thinking maybe we (volunteers) could pick up where they left off and continue this initiative. Previous discussion [2]. Edit: added previous discussion to the…

This seems like an amazing concept and I have been thinking of it ever since I saw KhanAcademy knowledge tree.

I can see this being combined with Arbital's Lens (Same thing explained in multiple ways - from a simple explanation for a 10-year-old to a rigorous explanation for a mathematician)

I always considered this the best way to actually progress in my learning and I still see it as the next big thing after Wikipedia, once it's done correctly.

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