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Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

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Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#51

Post by denzil_correa »

restofus wrote: post #47
CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt similarly dismayed about a machine learning course which doesn't demand knowledge of calculus.

I disagree I do not know calculus and would not have done this class if that was the case. I am now implementing ML in my day to day work . Anybody can make ML difficult , the greatness is in making it easy for people to use it and that makes a real world impact IMHO

and I believe this "Anybody can make ML difficult , the greatness is in making it easy for people to use it" is the real deal.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#52

Post by laibert »

I'm not sure I understand how opening up classes to the online world would would affect the coursework of Stanford students. If the author felt that CS229a was not rigorous enough, he should have just taken CS229 whose problem sets could double as full-time jobs.

Morever, a good chunk of stanford CS classes are already offered online through SCPD (the professional development system) and as far as I know, the structure of those classes remain unchanged.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#53

Post by balloot »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #22
diiq wrote: post #20

My degree is in Fine Art, and I thought the class was pointlessly easy. Fix the class in two easy steps: Lecture live, record the lectures. EVERY speaker is more effective when they have the feedback of their audience's faces. Expect the members of the public to meet the class' standard, don't shrivel the curriculum to match the public. An applied CS course that doesn't demand programming is bizarre. Flunk everyone i…

I felt similarly dismayed about a machine learning course which doesn't demand knowledge of calculus.

Wow. They didn't require knowledge of calculus? I took the actual CS 229 at Stanford and a class that doesn't require calculus at all would only be able to touch on a small fraction of topics.

My worry, which is similar to the worry of the student in the linked post, is that these lectures may be devaluing the in-person versions of the course. CS 229 was one of the top 5 hardest classes I have ever taken. I would rather not someone else take it via a dumbed down online lecture and say "I did that too! It wasn't so bad!"

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#54

Post by restofus »

benjvi wrote: post #23
tlammens wrote: post #6

According to the website http://cs229a.stanford.edu/ there are class meetings, according to the blogpost everything is done solitary? Another difference with the course offered to the public is that there is an open ended project. If he really wanted a harder class, why not take CS229 and not CS229A... If you want something to be harder, to get more out of something you should pursue it yourself, not depend on others…

Hasn't education always been about providing systems that encourage people to challenge themselves and learn difficult things (and signalling)? I am sure that it has always been possible to go to the library and learn almost anything you might to. And, the internet has built upon that capability. So, its legitimate to criticise a class for not challenging you or not supporting you.

You say encourage to challenge themselves (Internal) and then say the course must challenge them (external factor). In any course the basics are thought and the student must take it on themselves to learn more and ask when they do not understand. If you have played any sport the basics are easy but you spend time and practice so if your coach says hit the ball from 10 yards and if you feel that is easy you can move back to hit the ball from further why do you expect the coach to tell you that.You can ask the prof for more complex examples or use the homework in a real world example. This seems to be a case about he gets the same marks as me and I know a lot more than him.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#55

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

flatline wrote: post #48
noblethrasher wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know ML and have a math degree; I don't see why you'd need to know what a derivative is. If anything, I think exposure to ML and functional programming before differential calculus could be beneficial since you'd better appreciate that differentiation is just one special application (no pun intended) of the concept of higher order functions.

If I recall, solving back propagation in multiple-layer perceptrons was an unsolved problem for some time, and the solution relies pretty much solely on partial differentiation. I don't know much about ML but things like neural networks were pure mathematical constructs before they were CS topics. I agree with the GP, though, you don't need to know the actual math for most of this stuff.

On the point regarding the necessary knowledge of maths for ML (or indeed statistics which is the same material but a slightly different focus), I'm conflicted.

Coming at it from my perspective (learned a lot of math in high school, forgot most of it until I started a PhD), i would agree that a lot of the time, you don't need to understand the mathematical underpinnings of this stuff. That being said, as I've learned and remembered more of the math, my capability to understand (and debug errors) of all of this has increased tremendously.

I do think, if you intend to use ML every day, then you need to commit to understanding everything you use within a certain time frame of you beginning to use it (ideally immediately but that's often not possible). Anyway, derivatives are cool, and transform the way you look at the world, so you should definitely learn some of those.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#56

Post by denzil_correa »

pg_bot wrote: post #8

I have watched a few of the online lectures offered by Stanford and I can't help but notice that the audio and video quality of the lectures is terrible. The video will not track the lecturer, and the audio will randomly cut in and out for long periods of time. (If I remember correctly, one lecture was missing half its audio) Also, I am unsure of the class sizes at Stanford but it seems like no one can arrive on time…

I am not sure you're on the same page as the author.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#57

Post by [deleted] »

johnohara wrote: post #39
absconditus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principles be damned, there is money to be made!

I don't mean to imply that schools should be in it for the $$$. I get your point. But costs are an issue. A big issue. And right now student tuitions shoulder a large part of that burden. Stanford's total enrollment is about 20,000 students. $35,000 per year = $700,000,000. Offer 16 new online courses which yields 20,000 students per course taking a $99 final exam. $31,680,000. Less than 5% of annual tuition-based re…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#58

Post by johnohara »

absconditus wrote: post #49
johnohara wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to imply that schools should be in it for the $$$. I get your point. But costs are an issue. A big issue. And right now student tuitions shoulder a large part of that burden. Stanford's total enrollment is about 20,000 students. $35,000 per year = $700,000,000. Offer 16 new online courses which yields 20,000 students per course taking a $99 final exam. $31,680,000. Less than 5% of annual tuition-based re…

The problem is providing a questionable education and then selling a meaningless certification to make money. These classes are also highly vulnerable to cheating and you can be sure that a large number of people will take advantage of this to pump up their resumes.

I think that's why MITx plans to use a third-party for their certification exams. Similiar to testing centers for standardized exams like the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, etc.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#59

Post by johnohara »

johnohara wrote: post #39
absconditus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principles be damned, there is money to be made!

I don't mean to imply that schools should be in it for the $$$. I get your point. But costs are an issue. A big issue. And right now student tuitions shoulder a large part of that burden. Stanford's total enrollment is about 20,000 students. $35,000 per year = $700,000,000. Offer 16 new online courses which yields 20,000 students per course taking a $99 final exam. $31,680,000. Less than 5% of annual tuition-based re…

Pulled the numbers from here: http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2011.html
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