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Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

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Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#121

Post by utxaa »

vvillena wrote: post #64
adeel_siddiqui wrote: post #13

Programming Languages, Dan Grossman, UW. https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages It is a 3 part course and a bit more intensive than other courses on Coursera with challenging assignments. It helped me gain a deeper understanding of statically vs dynamically typed languages. Designing a tiny language in Part B is the best part of the course. Concludes with a nice comparison between OOP and functional lan…

Did this one when it was just one single course. The content is great, but the best thing by fat is the teacher. Dan Grossman is a natural teaching talent, and this course shows how one single teacher can make a difference.

dan is awesome. nice guy too.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#122

Post by iou »

verroq wrote: post #53
iou wrote: post #40

Cryptography 1, time well spent. ~3000 reviews at 4.8 stars https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto

Just don’t hold your breath for Cryptography 2

That perennial reddit thread on this is priceless, it should be an official meme now!

Also pretend or real J.P Aumasson handle?

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#123

Post by iou »

Thorentis wrote: post #102
latenightcoding wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hoping it would finally be available this year. Now I think it's never going to happen.

The course is apparently being released when the accompanying book is complete. The book is free, and you can see the current version here: https://cryptobook.us/

It's super dense though, even with a math background I struggled to make headway.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#124

Post by gmiller123456 »

xenocyon wrote: post #77
shuckles wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. Recent offerings of the course are in Python: cs229.Stanford.edu.

That's not the entire explanation for Ng's use of Octave though. At the birth of Coursera in 2012, R and Python were already clearly established in the field of data science. R was the dominant open-source language for data science, with Python very close behind (and already gaining ascendancy among folks who identified with "machine learning" rather than "data science"). I remember Matlab/Octave being more associate…

I think his choice of Octave was really just to avoid using Matlab. I had taken several other courses around the same time, and they all used Matlab. All of the courses had arranged for a free Matlab license for the time the course was active. You also were given the option of buying the Student version for $99. That didn't last long, I haven't seen any courses offering a free license (or even using Matlab for that matter), and to get the Student license you have to be enrolled at a 4 year institution.

In those classes that did use Matlab, there were quite a few people sticking to Octave, though it wasn't 100% compatable. And when I got to Ng's course, I (and I imagine a whole lot of others) were really happy to see he went 100% with Octave. Had he gone the Matlab route, the old course would be pretty worthless now.

We'll never know what happened behind closed doors, but I think Matlab was sponsoring some courses in order to get new people hooked on Matlab and it just didn't pay off.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#125

Post by gmiller123456 »

infinyte7 wrote: post #104

Not coursera https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOtl7M3yp-DV69F32zdK7... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL462275E91FC7844D

So people don't have to click the link to see what those are about. First link is "Alanysis of Algorithms" from Stoney Brook University, second is "Discrete Mathematics" also from Stoney Brook.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#126

Post by jackallis »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #46
samvher wrote: post #9

I quite liked "How to win a data science competition" ( https://www.coursera.org/learn/competitive-data-science ) where I learned a lot about validation strategies and machine learning on tabular data. The course has its own Kaggle competition. I also really liked "Discrete optimization" ( https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization ). At the time that I took it it also had a competitive element where you wo…

> I quite liked "How to win a data science competition As a machine learning researcher I am on the one hand glad that folks are learning more about the topic. On the other hand, this is totally the wrong approach and it will teach you the wrong lessons. The idea that you can just treat data as a uniform dump of tables and that grinding your way to high numbers is somehow worthwhile is simply terrible. The resulting…

ok - what is the alternative?

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#127

Post by avmich »

I think HN should be interested by that Coursera today requires reCAPTCHA passing to log into. That filters out some browsers or extensions.

Also at least some courses are paid-only - initially there were plenty of free courses. For example, even if you don't want a certificate for Deep Learning specialization, just to view videos require you to enter a credit card and agree to some dim conditions probably drafted by lawyers (and expected to be read by non-lawyers).

Coursera was great initially, with well taught courses. Now it's more of a gated community, much worse IMO than it used to be. Hope there are better offerings elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#128

Post by avyfain »

repsilat wrote: post #47

I took a bunch back in the day, and I liked Economics of Money and Banking[1] (by Perry Mehrling) more than most other courses. It's partly a history of the American financial system, and partly a tour of some modern financial instruments and institutions. The focus is on how things work and why they're designed as they are, and not so much on how things are priced. Deposits, bonds, commodity futures, central banks,…

I did "The Modern and the Postmodern" last year, and really enjoyed it without doing the essays/peer review. Curiously I'm now working through Mehrling's course, too.

Another one I'd recommend if you enjoyed those two, although in a very different vein is Bloom's Moralities of Everyday Life, which is supposedly a psychology course, but really goes into comparative culture questions that IMO make it closer to an anthropology course. https://www.coursera.org/learn/moralities

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#129

Post by dryd »

I really enjoyed "The Modern World, Part One: Global History from 1760 to 1910" [1] by Philip Zelikow. He clearly put a lot of thought into developing his lectures -- there's also a part two [2] that picks up where the first leaves off.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world

[2] https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world-2

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#130

Post by alisonkisk »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #124
xenocyon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the entire explanation for Ng's use of Octave though. At the birth of Coursera in 2012, R and Python were already clearly established in the field of data science. R was the dominant open-source language for data science, with Python very close behind (and already gaining ascendancy among folks who identified with "machine learning" rather than "data science"). I remember Matlab/Octave being more associate…

I think his choice of Octave was really just to avoid using Matlab. I had taken several other courses around the same time, and they all used Matlab. All of the courses had arranged for a free Matlab license for the time the course was active. You also were given the option of buying the Student version for $99. That didn't last long, I haven't seen any courses offering a free license (or even using Matlab for that m…

Why would they be worthless? Octave is Matlab clone.
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