Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#141

Post by omarhaneef » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 8:15 AM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #63

omarhaneef wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate his attention to pedagogy. Even small things like noticing that students learn better with Matlab/Octave than with R or Python is the kind of observation that takes a combination of knowledge, effort and caring about teaching.

I could be wrong, but I think it has nothing to do with that, and now to do with the course being so old that R and Python weren't the standard ML languages yet.

In his video for the course, he explains that he tried python and R but found students grasped the concepts better with Matlab/Octave. If I recall, it is in the video for the first lecture.

I agree with a sibling comment that it was python and R were well established at the time.

Also makes you think about how comprehension is closely tied to expression even for ostensibly similar languages.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#142

Post by omarhaneef » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 8:18 AM UTC

budoso wrote: post #75

shuckles wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I still think that for learning the math behind ml Matlab still makes the most sense though. It takes the focus off the programming itself and enforces the matrix concepts. Although python is the undisputed king in that regard so unfortunately it makes more sense to teach that

This is probably right. But I am surprised there isn’t a python library that is equally expressive.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#143

Post by vvm » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 8:33 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #32

I thought "The science of the solar system" by Mike Brown was an excellent introduction. https://www.coursera.org/learn/solar-system

I second this, one of the best courses I attended on coursera.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#144

Post by stockkid » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 9:19 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #42

iou wrote: post #40

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

+1 for this... Really good. Did it years ago and it was all very clear to me. However as I don't use this in daily life I pretty much lost all the knowledge again :)

Same. Having finished the course years ago, I remember most vividly the following: never implement your own crypto. Not many details survived the time but it was intellectually rewarding.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#145

Post by aoshifo » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 9:30 AM UTC

commonturtle wrote: post #3

Scott Page's Model Thinking course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking . Broad overview of how to think in models to understand the world around you.

For me, this was also the most interesting course. But I don't think you can still access it (I tried a couple of months ago to revisit it). But Scott Page also has a book out on the topic "The Model Thinker", which covers most of the course.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#146

Post by Fnoord » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 9:59 AM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #90

st1x7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend skipping this one. It contains fairly obvious advice, the information density is low and it isn't delivered very well. I really don't know why it's recommended so often.

It is recommended often because Learning How To Learn is a very fundamental part of your skill set which, sadly, many people either lack or do sub-optimal. Precisely because of that it can contain "obvious" device; because you are already (partly) familiar with it. I find it rather arrogant to say its useless for everyone. Its a fairly quick course, where you can spend more time on aspects if you desire. This topic a…

s/device/advice

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#147

Post by rich_sasha » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 10:39 AM UTC

Rapzid wrote: post #97

rich_sasha wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I found the course disappointingly shallow. I did do it soon after it came out, maybe it got much better with time. I also have a background / job in statistics, though not ML as such. While it does talk through the basics of ML, it is really barely a taster. It doesn’t leave you with any skills, other than, if you buy a book and work through it, you will know what a “decision tree” is ahead of time. Wit…

Have you tried the deep learning courses? They steer away from statistics and proofs, but all the math required to build a convoluted network is covered. Lib use is very low level at first; not too far removed from doing it all from scratch it you really wanted to waste the time.

I haven’t done the deep learning courses, only the Machine Learning one.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#148

Post by Tainnor » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

joshlk wrote: post #2

Nand to Tetris: how a computer is built from the ground up. Starting from nand logic gates all the way to OO programming https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer

Have never done the course, but I did work through the entire book some years ago and it was an intensely rewarding experience.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#149

Post by gmiller123456 » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #130

gmiller123456 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's certainly the goal, but in the courses I took, the Octave users always had Octave specific issues they had to work through, so there were some incompatibilities. This was about 10 years ago, so I imagine Octave has made some progress in that area too.

Re: Ask HN: Top Coursera Courses?

#150

Post by rskirkpatrick » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

Algorithms by Princeton University, taught by Dr. Robert Sedgewick. That was the most organized and well-taught course I have taken on Coursera. The visuals for explaining algorithms were beautiful, Dr. Sedgewick explained the material extremely well, and my favorite part, were the assignments.

The assignments are completed in Java and cover the lecture material from the week. For example, your 1st assignment is to use a union data structure to determine if a grid percolates, similar to a coffee filter percolating.

One slight drawback with the course was that it was originally published several years ago, so the forums are not well moderates much more and some of the previous quizzes are no longer available. Also Princeton does not issue certifications of completion.

Still it’s the best online course I have taken in a MOOC.