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Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

pgm-class.org

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Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#11

Post by bravura »

forkandwait wrote: post #8

I have the book, and it is fantastically well written and easy to follow. I just signed up -- does anyone know if they send an email or something?

Based upon reading the course description, if you can grok Daphne + Nir's book, then you won't learn anything from the class.

"This class does require some abstract thinking and mathematical skills. However, it is designed to require fairly little background, and a motivated student can pick up the background material as the concepts are introduced. We hope that, using our new learning platform, it should be possible for everyone to understand all of the core material."

and "For additional depth, you can refer to the best-selling textbook, _Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques_ by Daphne and Nir Friedman."

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#12

Post by queensnake »

johnohara wrote: post #7

I'm curious. Why do these classes all have their own domain names?

You mean as opposed to pgm-class.online.stanford.edu? Well they're cheap, it makes the urls shorter, it's less confusing. Just good design. But too, I guess the ai-class is run by one of the teachers' startups, so it may be to separate them from Stanford, for that reason and to make it clear that you don't get Stanford credit.

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#13

Post by pbh »

sabraham wrote: post #9
cypherpunks2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Further, Daphne Koller is a serious force in the field, and seems to be a pretty good supervisor, so I'm guessing/hoping she is an interesting/engaging lecturer as well. Though, Stanford CS/Stats students are more able to comment on this last point. What's the source? She's a brilliant researcher, but I've heard quite the opposite about her attitude towards human relationships...

Ah, so I used a 2-degree heuristic to come to that conclusion--I haven't had any first hand experience with her, nor do I have contact with her former students. A few stats professors independently recommended her to me as a supervisor, her students seem to do well, and her research page is more welcoming than most (versus, say Ullman's page: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/ or say, read Brian Ripley's posts on t…

I know a lot of Daphne's former and current students and she seems to be a great advisor who genuinely cares about producing both excellent research and top quality research talent.

Further, in the department, I think she is one of the people who cares most about teaching. She runs the undergraduate summer research program. She re-does her class on PGMs substantially almost every time she teaches it to try to make it better. (Though such a high rate of change may or may not be a good idea.) Daphne is almost certainly one of the key people behind the *-class effort at Stanford CS.

For those with a negative impression of Daphne, my guess is just that they are misinterpreting her directness. If she thinks you're wrong, or you're doing the wrong research, you'll know about it.

(Also, Ullman is one of the nicest people in the department in person, which is crazy given that he wrote the standard texts in compilers, databases, and arguably automata. He's emeritus these days though.)

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#14

Post by forkandwait »

bravura wrote: post #11
forkandwait wrote: post #8

I have the book, and it is fantastically well written and easy to follow. I just signed up -- does anyone know if they send an email or something?

Based upon reading the course description, if you can grok Daphne + Nir's book, then you won't learn anything from the class. "This class does require some abstract thinking and mathematical skills. However, it is designed to require fairly little background, and a motivated student can pick up the background material as the concepts are introduced. We hope that, using our new learning platform, it should be possible…

I can grok the book, but I can't read it like it's a vampire novel and remember anything useful... hence the reason to sign up and have something of a schedule to follow.

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#16

Post by adbge »

queensnake wrote: post #12
johnohara wrote: post #7

I'm curious. Why do these classes all have their own domain names?

You mean as opposed to pgm-class.online.stanford.edu? Well they're cheap, it makes the urls shorter, it's less confusing. Just good design. But too, I guess the ai-class is run by one of the teachers' startups, so it may be to separate them from Stanford, for that reason and to make it clear that you don't get Stanford credit.

    > Just good design.
From a SEO standpoint, it would make more sense to have them all hosted at stanford.edu/someclass, since the classes would then benefit from the "trust-factor" of the root domain. You'll notice that most of Google's web properties are hosted at google.com/something and not something.google.com or a separate domain, presumably for the same reason.

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#17

Post by danger »

cypherpunks2 wrote: post #5
sabraham wrote: post #2

PGMs don't get the same sexy treatment that ML and AI seem to get in pop science articles, so it may be worth stating explicitly that they're very much used in ML and are intellectually fascinating in their own right. A graphical model can fully describe the distribution and dependences of a model. Why this is important: a graphical model makes it very easy to give a computer your model, and there has been great succ…

> Further, Daphne Koller is a serious force in the field, and seems to be a pretty good supervisor, so I'm guessing/hoping she is an interesting/engaging lecturer as well. Though, Stanford CS/Stats students are more able to comment on this last point. What's the source? She's a brilliant researcher, but I've heard quite the opposite about her attitude towards human relationships...

I did research with Daphne (and co-authored a paper with her) in my senior year of undergrad, and she demanded a high standard of work, yes, but she was an excellent supervisor. Everybody knows how brilliant she is, but she also put a lot of effort into teaching my (also undergrad) project partner and I about how to formulate a research problem, how to do research, and how to present research. The primary concern appeared to be our personal growth, not the research machine (though that's not to say that the research wasn't important).

Working with her was one of the highlights of my undergrad education, and her class was great, too.

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#18

Post by sabraham »

pbh wrote: post #13
sabraham wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so I used a 2-degree heuristic to come to that conclusion--I haven't had any first hand experience with her, nor do I have contact with her former students. A few stats professors independently recommended her to me as a supervisor, her students seem to do well, and her research page is more welcoming than most (versus, say Ullman's page: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/ or say, read Brian Ripley's posts on t…

I know a lot of Daphne's former and current students and she seems to be a great advisor who genuinely cares about producing both excellent research and top quality research talent. Further, in the department, I think she is one of the people who cares most about teaching. She runs the undergraduate summer research program. She re-does her class on PGMs substantially almost every time she teaches it to try to make it…

Thanks for the insights! I appreciate it.

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#19

Post by dudurocha »

gwern wrote: post #6
taejo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm I right to surmise that "graphical" refers to graphs rather than "graphics", or was that just one example in the video?

Yes. Confusing, isn't it?

For me, as non native English speaker is more confusing.

In Portuguese we say grafos(graphs) and gráficos, when we refer to pics and images. And when I read something in English, I wonder if its graphs referring to maths or to pics.

Re: Stanford Class: Probabilistic Graphical Models

#20

Post by mark_l_watson »

forkandwait wrote: post #8

I have the book, and it is fantastically well written and easy to follow. I just signed up -- does anyone know if they send an email or something?

I signed up for the course. I have a good general background in AI but my knowledge of probabilistic graph models is thin - hoping to quickly fill in the gaps.

I thought about buying the book but thought that listening to the lectures and doing the assignments would be more fun.

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