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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?

#161

Post by swframe2 »

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.

FYI: This video on PGM by Bert Huang is pretty easy to follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCWRTKnOYYg&index=20&list=PL...

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

#162

Post by dabent »

The "Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies" on Coursera helped me gain an understanding cryptocurrencies. Until I took that course I knew very little about the subject.

It's possibly a little dated now, but it's a good primer.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency/

I'd love to hear what other cryptocurrency courses others recommend.

As many others mentioned, Andrew Ng's course on Machine Learning on Coursera was also very good.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning

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

#163

Post by antman »

As a serial MOOCist I cannot single out any one so here is a list per domain.

Data Science

Introduction to Probability - The Science of Uncertainty,math oriented MIT/EDX Difficulty:5/5 Videos:5/5 Material and exercises:5/5 Usefulness: 5/5

Learning from Data, math oriented formerly Caltech/EDX now on caltech, check the exercises and you will see the difference in quality with Andrew Ng: Difficulty:4/5 Videos:4:5 Material and exercises:5:5 Usefulness:3/5

The Analytics Edge - Bertsimas MIT/EDX.You will learn practical stuff in R includes a kaggle competition. Difficulty:3/5 Videos:4/5 Material and exercises:6/5 Usefulness:6/5

Computational Probability and Inference MIT/EDX Computational probabilty using python. Difficulty:2/5 Videos:3/5 Material and exercises:6/5 Usefulness:5/5

Basic Modeling for Discrete Optimization: Uses an easy to learn language called minizinc which has multiple backends and is useful for those types of problems. VERY pleasant to watch videos. Difficulty:2/5 Videos:4/5 Material and exercises:3/5 Usefulness:5/5

Deep learning: deeplearning.ai coursera and fast.ai for more practical stuff.

Non data science:

I have not done the exercises on these just watched them:

Learning how to learn: Life changing I wish it existed many years ago.

Influencing People: Puts things into perspective. Makes you ponder about morality

Roman Architecture: Includes the "why" it is like the old "who moved my cheese" book, but in roman architecture edition.

Explaining European Paintings, 1400 to 1800: What it says on the tin.

Economics of money and Banking: In all tuthe courses I have listed the professors are very good. But this guy.... Makes a difficult subject so approachable and watching the news becomes as painful as watching a train full of passengers going to broken bridge

I am sure I have forgotten others

MOOCs have changed my life, financially and in other ways. I thank all the people involved.

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

#164

Post by ldesegur »

jcadam wrote: post #101
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…

> Nicest: Andrew Ng, Machine Learning, Coursera. Interesting topic, well-planned material, very well avoids going into the mathy details, but still conveys a feeling of understanding of the topic, so accessible to a wide audience. (Martin Odersky, Functional Programming Principles in Scala, Coursera, was almost equally nice, but had some rough edges in the first run.) Have to agree with all of this. I've taken Andrew…

Interestingly, you took the same path I did with Scala and ML. My criticism about these courses is that some of the projects and content can be too easy to get right, skimming on the surface in some areas that would need more time to grok. Lately I've moved to Udacity and there I can find more in-depth projects and discussions with virtual classmates. The price is steep but you pay for what you are getting.

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

#165

Post by wongma »

loganekz wrote: post #8

Functional Programming Principles in Scala [1] taught by Martin Odersky, professor at EPFL and creator of the Scala language. [1] - https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1

Would this course be appropriate for those with a lot of general programming (OOP) knowledge, but little to no FP experience?

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

#166

Post by ldesegur »

wpietri wrote: post #125
jcadam wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nicest: Andrew Ng, Machine Learning, Coursera. Interesting topic, well-planned material, very well avoids going into the mathy details, but still conveys a feeling of understanding of the topic, so accessible to a wide audience. (Martin Odersky, Functional Programming Principles in Scala, Coursera, was almost equally nice, but had some rough edges in the first run.) Have to agree with all of this. I've taken Andrew…

I too loved Odersky's course. It was definitely rough, but having the creator of a language teach a course about it provided insights that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

The Odersky's course is phenomenal. Highly recommended and it shows how much attention and craftmanship was put into designing Scala. Bonus: Martin speaks like Arnold and it's very enjoyable to have a "Terminator" voice teaching you complicated material.

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

#167

Post by suddensleep »

dabent wrote: post #162

The "Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies" on Coursera helped me gain an understanding cryptocurrencies. Until I took that course I knew very little about the subject. It's possibly a little dated now, but it's a good primer. https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency/ I'd love to hear what other cryptocurrency courses others recommend. As many others mentioned, Andrew Ng's course on Machine Learning on Courser…

Not a cryptocurrency course per se, but Dan Boneh's course on Cryptography[1] is an excellent introduction to most of the building blocks of cryptosystems, including the technology underlying most cryptocurrencies.

In terms of level, it is more than a little technical (programming exercises in both cryptography and cryptanalysis await you!), while still remaining far from rigorous (compared to, say, a graduate-level cryptography text).

[1]https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto

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

#168

Post by dragonwriter »

wongma wrote: post #165
loganekz wrote: post #8

Functional Programming Principles in Scala [1] taught by Martin Odersky, professor at EPFL and creator of the Scala language. [1] - https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1

Would this course be appropriate for those with a lot of general programming (OOP) knowledge, but little to no FP experience?

IMO, yes, very much.

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

#170

Post by wwwater »

blocked_again wrote: post #151

Buddhism and Modern Psychology by Princeton. This course was just mind-blowing for me. It talks a lot about how our evolutionary survival mechanisms prevent us from seeing the world clearly. If anyone has taken similar courses would love to hear. https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation

This is an absolutely amazing course! It's also about how Buddhism actually guessed so many things correctly about how our brains work. The author explains about Buddhist ideas and almost for every of them, there is a scientific experiment, that indicates it could be true.
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