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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?

#81

Post by mathieubordere »

chmaynard wrote: post #67
grdvnl wrote: post #19

I took the Programming Languages course on Coursera which is so far the best course for me. It changed the way I learn any new programming language. https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages I see that they have split the course into 2 parts.

Actually, there are three parts. The course uses Standard ML, Racket, and Ruby as vehicles for teaching the concepts. The intent is to make you a more effective programmer in any language.

It used to be 1 course, they've split it into 3 parts for commercial reasons I suppose.

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

#82

Post by carusooneliner »

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…

> Jennifer Widom, Databases, Stanford. This is not the flashiest of a topic, but oh boy was it well organized.

Couldn't agree more. I took this course in 2011 but didn't have a need for working with databases until 2014. Three years after I took the course I was able to jump in and work fluently on databases -- Mongo, Sqlite, Firebase, etc. The least I can say is the course helped me internalize database concepts.

This course has the right amount of handholding yet challenges you enough so you acquire long-lasting skills.

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

#84

Post by robertely »

cjauvin wrote: post #45

Three Coursera MOOCs I particularly enjoyed: * Discrete Optimization: almost entirely problem-driven, very challenging and entertaining prof; https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization * Crypto I: very deep, thorough and crystal clear explanations; https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto * Computer Networks: excellent overall course covering a wide variety of topics; https://www.coursera.org/instructor/~51747…

Computer Networks looks great it's a shame they pulled it down.

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

#85

Post by currymj »

David Silver (now of DeepMind, leading their reinforcement learning group which has had so many big high profile successes) has video lectures for his introduction to reinforcement learning. It's very thorough and uses a good, free textbook, and the programming projects are interesting but also reasonable in scope.

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

#86

Post by imranq »

Best course so far: AI from BerkeleyX

Other great courses: Learning to Learn, Irrational Psychology by Dan Ariely, and Algorithms by Sedgewick

Can someone recommend a good way to work with other students on MOOCs? I've taken many courses, but they aren't much better than just reading the textbook and working on a personal project, although the curation of content is valuable.

The relationship aspect is sorely missing from online courses. If there was an easy way to have a classroom setting with highly motivated peers each following the MOOC with a collaborative environment, then I would definitely want to sign up. You say that's what college is for? Well I've already graduated, signing up for random college classes is extremely expensive and the peer group is highly variable.

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

#88

Post by allanbreyes »

burlesona wrote: post #69

Georgia Tech's Knowledge Based AI class (on Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/course/knowledge-based-ai-cognitive-... ) Fantastic course, more focused on theory than programming, but full of deeply fascinating commentary on what is knowledge, intelligence, learning, etc. and what does it mean for a program to demonstrate it (ie. what is AI anyway?). My daughter was about 18 mo. old at the time I took the class, it was…

I took the same course as part of the OMS CS[0] program. I wasn't terribly a fan of the lectures, but the most fascinating part for me was the course project: building an AI agent that solves Raven's Progressive Matrices[1], basically a visual IQ test. Really intriguing and challenging stuff... easy to get "easy" problems right, but incredibly hard for any of the harder[2] ones. I do wish I didn't have to mess with any computer vision, and instead spent more time integrating more concepts in KBAI.

[0]: http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices

[2]: http://www.highiqpro.com/iq-tests-iq-scores-iq-questions/mat...

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

#89

Post by kmfrk »

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.

This is probably the right answer, boring as it is.

I also loved that I would actually see Sal's videos come up as the top results for my calculus questions to illustrate things like matrix multiplication.

It's not often I feel like YouTube hits are as dead on the money for me as they used to be in thsoe days.

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

#90

Post by kmfrk »

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.

This is probably the right answer, boring as it is.

I also loved that I would actually see Sal's videos come up as the top results for my calculus questions to illustrate things like matrix multiplication.

It's not often I feel like YouTube hits are as dead on the money for me as they used to be in thsoe days.

The 10-minute limit on videos at the time was to YouTube what the 140 character-limit was to Twitter.

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