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Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

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Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#81

Post by ForHackernews »

It's not on Coursera, but Caltech's Yaser Abu-Mostafa offers "Learning from Data" on his own website https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html and it's intermittently on EdX https://www.edx.org/course/learning-from-data-introductory-m...

This is far and away the best MOOC I've ever taken. The class is genuinely challenging. It's a real Caltech undergraduate course, and you can't get away with copy-pasting code or just keep resubmitting until you pass the grader. The course is focused on real understanding of what's going on mathematically, not just learning to use some library API.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#82

Post by harperlee »

reilly3000 wrote: post #72
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a plan to get more advanced courses? I'm asking because there seems to be an extreme bias towards beginners courses, or content that is rather limited in breadth and depth compared to what a university might teach during a full masters degree. ie, there's about 50 security intro courses (with lots of overlap of course), one "advanced" course that's been delayed for long and isn't all that advanced (Crypto II…

There should be less ratings of advanced materials, and there should be less coursework. Advanced study is the long tail of learning.

That should not affect the rating by much with an appropriate sorting. See: https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#84

Post by Eugeleo »

elliekelly wrote: post #9

The Science of Wellbeing[1] taught by Yale’s Dr. Laurie Santos lives up to the hype. It’s been discussed on HN a few times[2] which is how I stumbled upon it. If you don’t mind my asking, did your school give you access to coursera to earn credit while the campus is shut down? Or is it just something interesting and fun for students who might be inclined to learn something new while they’re stuck at home? Either way,…

Thanks for the recommendation, sounds great!

As mentioned above, I think the credit is due to Coursera more than my university; either way, at least they've let me know that something like this is possible.

It's just for fun; most of our courses are now taught over Zoom or similar services, assignments are handled digitally and if it wasn't for the low-quality webcams, you'd almost forget something is out of the ordinary.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#86

Post by jlengrand »

dhawalhs wrote: post #31
jlengrand wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, thanks so much for that! This link showed me I have interest for things I did not even know existed on the platform. I mean, Mountains 101, Poetry? Awesome!

I would personally recommend Learning how to Learn!

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#87

Post by bjterry »

harperlee wrote: post #82
reilly3000 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be less ratings of advanced materials, and there should be less coursework. Advanced study is the long tail of learning.

That should not affect the rating by much with an appropriate sorting. See: https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...

I would expect people who take advanced courses to rate systematically differently from people who take beginner courses. For comparisons between similar courses it's probably fine, but would be hard to use the scores to compare the value of beginner courses to advanced courses.

Of course, even the definition of better here is so ill-defined it probably is of no practical significance.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#88

Post by Dowwie »

Coursera is great but you're going to miss a lot of opportunities by limiting yourself to just that platform.

For instance, it hasn't been widely advertised, but you can essentially take Steven Pinker's 2020 course at Harvard on Rationale: https://stevenpinker.com/classes/rationality-gened-1066

There's upwards of 20 hours of video on this course alone. You don't get that kind of depth from most Coursera MOOCs. Further, the syllabus helps narrow down a vast subject to a few months of effort and there is no better design for learning it.

Critical reasoning skills are essential! Why not learn from one of the great thinkers on the subject?

This course has the potential of ascending to the upper echelon of MOOCs. I really hope that the content doesn't get taken down. It doesn't seem downloadable..

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#89

Post by betamaxthetape »

Build a Modern Computer from First Principles: From Nand to Tetris (Project-Centered Course) https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer

and then part 2: https://www.coursera.org/learn/nand2tetris2

[Both courses are free]

These are fantastic courses, by far the best MOOCs I have ever taken. I went into them knowing nothing about computer architecture, and by the end of the first course I was able to design a fully-working digital computer in Logisim.

While other courses consist of lectures + text content, with Nand2Tetris the course is practical. The authors have developed a complete software system to allow you to complete the course:

* A simplified hardware programming language to design the ALU, CPU, clock, RAM, etc..

* A hardware simulator and debugger to allow you to test the hardware that you develop

* An assembler for the assembly programs you write for the computer

* A compiler for the higher-level programs you write for the computer

I'm probably banging-on about this course more than I reasonably should, but that's just because I enjoyed the course so much!

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

#90

Post by tasubotadas »

randomstring wrote: post #13

I recommend the meta-cognition course: Learning how to Learn. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn The primary instructor, Dr. Barbara Oakley, wrote the book, _A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)_ that isn't just about learning math.

I can second this too. The presentation was a bit crude sometimes but the course was good nevertheless.
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