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Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#71

Post by ahjushi »

OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #28
vector_rotcev wrote: post #4

Learning how to learn, Barbara Oakley, Coursera. By far and away the best learning course I've taken in my life as well, I wish it had been available before I had completed my formal education.

Everyone who wants to learn anything in life should take this course first, I can't endorse it enough.

Would you say this course would help learn languages? I'm currently self-studying Japanese, so adding another "class" would be difficult time-wise. But if this Coursera course would help, it might be worth the time for me. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#73

Post by rripken »

I've taken 10 GaTech OMSCS courses via Udacity. Two of my favorites (so far): Intro to Computer Vision: https://www.udacity.com/course/introduction-to-computer-visi... Reinforcement Learning: https://www.udacity.com/course/reinforcement-learning--ud600

I found the Isbell+Littman combo to work so well that I also took the ML course. I know some people complain about their humor but it was perfect for me. I could listen to those two explain just about anything. I still LOL when I think about Littman saying to Isbell something like "are you trying to teach us something by making this lecture infinitely long?" Who knew RL could be funny?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#74

Post by komali2 »

ahjushi wrote: post #71
OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who wants to learn anything in life should take this course first, I can't endorse it enough.

Would you say this course would help learn languages? I'm currently self-studying Japanese, so adding another "class" would be difficult time-wise. But if this Coursera course would help, it might be worth the time for me. Thanks!

100%, YES.

Self-taught Japanese, Chinese, etc. Course changed me. Wouldn't be a programmer without it.

Sidenote, there's no PM function here, but my email's in my profile. Shoot me a note if you want any tips on Japanese etc. Got decks of anki flashcards for daaaays.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#75

Post by jwhitlark »

kroltan wrote: post #66

I've taken "From NAND to Tetris" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken while at high school. Very nice explanation of the whole stack. As the name suggests, they teach the necessary to build your own computer, assembler, language and finally a simple game. I would say it goes to an "appropriate" level of detail. You certainly won't become an electrical engineer and game developer with it, but it gives great insight on al…

This course was excellent. After years of self study it really pulled everything together for me.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#78

Post by bitL »

dmytrish wrote: post #55
bitL wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGM was brutal... At Stanford straight As students were happy just to pass...

It's indeed dense and packed with many intermediate intuitions. On the other hand, I still feel that the course is often unnecessarily brutal and could use better explanations.

MIT had a similar course on edX and that one was brutal as well (Computational Probability and Inference). I guess nobody figured out how to teach it the easy way.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#79

Post by komali2 »

rectang wrote: post #2

Khan Academy math, because of the exercises. They are consistent, not very buggy, gamified, and consumable in small or large amounts. Sal Khan is a good communicator and the videos are decent, but it's the exercises that make Khan Academy exceptional.

Khan Academy filled the gaps from my inconsistent public schooling (moved a lot as a kid). Used to think I was just dumb (I might still be lol), but turns out missing some of the early math concepts is extremely destructive to later learning. Fill the gaps and everything else becomes so much easier.

I hear tell Sal Khan is hiding out in the Bay Area somewhere, really wish I'd bump into him in a bar so I can grab his tab or something. Dude's a hero to me.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#80

Post by mr_overalls »

dmytrish wrote: post #29
sampo wrote: post #26

Most fun: Pat Pattison, Songwriting, Coursera. Very good lectures, very good material, very well presented. Teaches a lot about writing song lyrics in just 6 weeks, breaks it nicely down to steps and recipes. I used to think that the best feature of MOOCs is the automatic grading and feedback from programming homework, but in this course, for the homework songwriting you gave and got feedback from 3-5 random people i…

> Probabilistic Graphical Models, Daphne Koller – the first course in the specialization has a very good and engaging start, but the gap between lectures and problems widens quickly after that (maybe that's why the author boasts about a "challenging" course "not for everyone"). I'm hesitant to take the next course of the specialization.

Is PGM still relevant as it was five years ago, given the renaissance in deep learning and other NN techniques?
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