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Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

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Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#41

Post by Homunculiheaded »

kahawe wrote: post #24

I think it is great that Harvard and Stanford open their course material on the internet but can someone explain to me why they would do it? I mean, what is in it for them - a bit of PR and friendly headlines aside? Their name and status alone is enough to stay "in business".

I used to work in academia, including a pretty well known university. As much as I like to be cynical at times, I sincerely believe there are lot of good professors at these institutions who sincerely believe that education should be free. Take for example MIT's push to have all their publications made open access, this was driven (in it's early stages) largely by Hal Abelson and a few other dedicated faculty/staff.

Top professors at top universities have a lot of clout, and despite the many issues there are with the current system of higher ed, I do believe that a lot of this work is sincerely driven by the ideals of good professors. Look at the interviews with Sebastian Thrun regarding the AI course, he clearly believes in finding a models of maximizing the quality to cost ratio for education.

Culturally I think places like Stanford, Harvard and MIT know well that many times you don't find your business model until you experiment, and if you want to be in charge of the future you have to be the one doing the experimenting. I think the angle that sells this to admins is that if you're a leading university you want to be pushing these boundaries, and if you want to be a head of the curve you need to be.

Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#42

Post by dlokshin »

kahawe wrote: post #24

I think it is great that Harvard and Stanford open their course material on the internet but can someone explain to me why they would do it? I mean, what is in it for them - a bit of PR and friendly headlines aside? Their name and status alone is enough to stay "in business".

In a way, I think that Harvard (and probably Standford, MIT, etc.) have done this all along. It's just getting publicity now.

I am class of '08 at Harvard and actually took this course (taught be a different professor--excellent when I took it). There were a handful of Boston and Cambridge locals who sat in and took the course with me. No one ever said a word to them. When I took a course on the history of Hollywood Cinema--where we watched 2 movies a week on the big screen--there were probably 30 or so locals who sat in on the lectures. No one ever said anything to them.

So Harvard has been a part of the community for some time now .. it's just more public now that you can disseminate lectures on iTunes and the internet instead of actually sitting in the lecture hall.

Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#43

Post by godDLL »

godDLL wrote: post #28
kahawe wrote: post #24

I think it is great that Harvard and Stanford open their course material on the internet but can someone explain to me why they would do it? I mean, what is in it for them - a bit of PR and friendly headlines aside? Their name and status alone is enough to stay "in business".

Showing off.

Showing off their tutors, jesus people.

Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#44

Post by philwelch »

slig wrote: post #20
tikhonj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless, of course, Apple refuses to support your platform. And if Apple does refuse--and they do--, your only hope would be reverse-engineering: you can't just port the program itself because it isn't open source. Imagine the cry if it was Windows only.

We don't have to imagine. Refer to Feynman classes that MS put online and only worked with Silverlight.

Silverlight is cross platform.

Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#45

Post by radiowave »

iamabhi9 wrote: post #19
MisterMerkin wrote: post #3

Is there any way to watch this without iTunes? I don't use it and have no desire to join Apple's 'ecosystem'.

If you are using GNU/Linux then there is an alternative http://tunesviewer.sourceforge.net/

Thank you! After several attempts to download these with iTunes, I'm actually having rather more luck with this software.

The videos play fine under Totem movie player on current release of Linux Mint.

Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#46

Post by sidupadhyay »

sayemm wrote: post #37

A great college textbook I had for intermediate probability theory is "A First Course in Probability" by Sheldon Ross, highly recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Probability-Sheldon-Ross/...

Another good book is "Mathematical statistics with applications" by Wackerly et al. It's focus is more on the application of the toolkit from probability, but about half the book focuses on the background of probability theory. What's great is that by the end of the book you will have a great introductory perspective of both frequentist and bayesian statistics. There are some gaps in the book, but it's a great reference nevertheless.

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Statistics-Applications-D...

Re: Harvard Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability, on iTunes

#47

Post by mdaniel »

iamabhi9 wrote: post #19
MisterMerkin wrote: post #3

Is there any way to watch this without iTunes? I don't use it and have no desire to join Apple's 'ecosystem'.

If you are using GNU/Linux then there is an alternative http://tunesviewer.sourceforge.net/

FWIW, it appears the project also provides an Android application: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tunesviewer/files/Android/

I tried it on my HTC Desire (Cyanogedmod 7.1.0) and the search function in the app turned up the Harvard statistics class immediately.

I hope those accounts below who lamented that they were on their Android tablets see this link.

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