Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken? • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by SiVal » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:35 PM UTC

antman wrote: post #163

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 Mater…

Are all of these non-data science courses from the same source? From different sources? Where are they?

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

#222

Post by mlboss » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

allanbreyes wrote: post #108

ScoutOrgo wrote: post #20

Fast.ai's (fast.ai) deep learning and machine learning courses. No ads, good notes/forum, and very approachable material for anyone that knows basic coding.

Have you considered deeplearning.ai? I was on the fence between the two, but ended up taking deeplearning.ai after reading a review[0]. > The fast AI course mainly teaches you the art of driving while Andrew’s course primarily teaches you the engineering behind the car. I'll probably take some of the fast.ai courses at some point, but the deeplearning.ai one was great. [0]: https://towardsdatascience.com/thoughts-aft…

Why not both ? Both are excellent courses. I took deeplearning.ai last year. This year I am planning to complete fast.ai.

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

#223

Post by davidivadavid » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

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.

That's also the one I would have picked.

I liked that it used ML, and the parallel/isomorphism between functional and object-oriented programming was really well illustrated IMO.

Really good to develop basic intuition before going into more advanced stuff.

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

#224

Post by icosa » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

vpribish wrote: post #147

delecti wrote: post #131

Is MOOC a commonly used term? I don't believe I've ever seen it before this post. Based on context, the default Wikipedia redirect [1] for it seems correct, but I'm surprised I never knew that concept had a name (and an acronym at that). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

I'd never heard it before either. It's just "online course". guess they wanted to feel cooler with an acronym?

Online courses that aren't MOOCs either:

1. Allow a limited number of students to sign up for a run of the class, which is on a specific schedule, and there's high interaction with and feedback from other students and the instructor. 2. Allow unlimited students to sign up, often at any time, but at most there's a forum or mailing list for participants to interact with each other. Many are just a series of videos or articles, maybe with some assignments, but there's no pressure to complete them.

MOOCs try to combine those. Unlimited students can sign up for scheduled classes. While the class is in session, students are assigned to grade each other's homework, so there's both pressure and interaction.

Most MOOC providers let you "audit" a class for free, which is basically a type 2 online course.

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

#225

Post by samford100 » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

allanbreyes wrote: post #88

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 a…

I took the class during my undergrad at Tech and I could not agree more. There was such a disconnect between the class material and the project.

Additionally, this is the class that gave us "Jill Watson", the robot TA.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/robot-ta-ai-1.3585801

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

#226

Post by excessi0n » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

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 is definitely the best MOOC I ever took. I hope they bring it back.

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

#227

Post by MajesticUnicorn » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

Charles Fried - Harvard Law Contract Course. Super nice and just a very good class to understand

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

#228

Post by eeZah7Ux » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

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…

Prof. Dan Boneh's Cryptography I is really good.

Compared to many other MOOCs, it provides solid foundations while being easy to follow.

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

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

#229

Post by peller » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 12:20 AM UTC

some_random wrote: post #215

Since no one has said it yet, /r/ludobots is pretty good. It's a University of Vermont course centered around ML for robotics. Specifically, the goal is to train a procedurally generated robot to walk using NNs. I wouldn't say it's the best I've ever taken but it's pretty unique and great fun.

I took a few courses by the same guy at school. Probably the best professor I had at UVM

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

#230

Post by bbarn » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 12:33 AM UTC

jitix wrote: post #21

neovive wrote: post #13

Over the past few years, I've watched a few courses on Udacity, Coursera and EdX. I prefer taking ad-hoc courses to fill knowledge gaps (statistics, AI, programming, math, etc.), so I can't give a full review of the complete Nanodegrees, Certificates, XSeries, etc. I usually watch the lessons as needed without completing the entire course; mixing and matching MOOC courses with video learning sites (e.g. Datacamp, You…

Do you have any recommendations on statistics for beginners?

Not a MOOC, but I loved this: http://www.statsoft.com/Textbook/Basic-Statistics/button/1