edX/MIT 8.05 QM II Barton Zwiebach Thought he did a really good job with the material, very clear.
Agree with others on Windom, Ng and Page.
Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
241–250 of 320 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#242Interesting how the myriad other mooc platforms, largely non-US, aren't mentioned.. futurelearn, novoed, ....
This makes me wonder what English speaking courses are being missed..
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#243Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms has been one of the best for me, not only as a general refresher on algorithms, but also as a way of better understanding complexity notations.
I enjoyed the lectures quite a bit, but ran into a lot of trouble with the problem sets. I'm wondering if anyone else had a similar experience, or if I should give it another chance and try some different approach? The problem I had was that he gave you a mostly finished program which utilizes the percolation algorithm, but then asks you to fill in some data structures and functions to make it work, and finally a tes…
I had a similar problem. The problem sets often left me very confused, and were more focused on using the algorithm in unique ways (which is valid but not necessarily my priority) than understanding how they worked.
Really liked that Tim's course let you build an intuitive understanding of algorithms, so you can build them just by thinking about the problem, instead of getting bogged down in optimization details.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#244Linear Dynamical Systems by Stephen Boyd of Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf1264iFr-w&list=PL06960BA52...
Programming Languages by Dan Grossman of University of Washington: https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#245Currently enjoying the 2017 lectures (and I bought the text) for McElreath's bayesian stats course: http://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/ Strang's MIT OCW Linear Algebra is pretty good. Probably also needs the textbook. John Tsitsiklis' MITx edx Probability intro course is probably the best course I've taken anywhere and better than anything I did in person at university. I didn't buy the text for this one tho…
I concur on the MIT edX Probability course. I spent at least 15 hours a week on the exercises but it was well worth it.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#246Most fun: Pat Pattison, Songwriting, Coursera. Very good lectures, very good material, very well presented. Teaches a lot about writing song lyrics in just 6 weeks, breaks it nicely down to steps and recipes. I used to think that the best feature of MOOCs is the automatic grading and feedback from programming homework, but in this course, for the homework songwriting you gave and got feedback from 3-5 random people i…
> Jennifer Widom, Databases, Stanford. This is not the flashiest of a topic, but oh boy was it well organized. Couldn't agree more. I took this course in 2011 but didn't have a need for working with databases until 2014. Three years after I took the course I was able to jump in and work fluently on databases -- Mongo, Sqlite, Firebase, etc. The least I can say is the course helped me internalize database concepts. Th…
That was the first MOOC I took as well. It turned out to be an excellent entry point for databases. Perhaps because it was one of the first Stanford MOOCs, the quality of it was high.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Computer Networks looks great it's a shame they pulled it down.
Take a look at https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Networking... . Haven't taken either, but Stanford typically puts out pretty good MOOCs.
Lectures are great. Material is at a solid undergrad level (should be suitable for someone with 1-2yrs of CS background). No programming assignments, so I would go look at Phil Levis's website to find the "regular" course website and do the programming assignments from there.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#248This might not be the answer you're looking for, but if you ever want to learn to play the guitar, Justin Sandercoe will take you from novice to expert for free at justinguitar.com. The way he teaches and structures his lessons will probably appeal to a lot of programmers. Also one of the nicest people in the world.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#249Khan Academy math, because of the exercises. They are consistent, not very buggy, gamified, and consumable in small or large amounts. Sal Khan is a good communicator and the videos are decent, but it's the exercises that make Khan Academy exceptional.
Khan Academy filled the gaps from my inconsistent public schooling (moved a lot as a kid). Used to think I was just dumb (I might still be lol), but turns out missing some of the early math concepts is extremely destructive to later learning. Fill the gaps and everything else becomes so much easier . I hear tell Sal Khan is hiding out in the Bay Area somewhere, really wish I'd bump into him in a bar so I can grab his…
Khan Academy, Wikipedia, Archive.org. Between those three there is a lifetime of free education.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#250This might not be the answer you're looking for, but if you ever want to learn to play the guitar, Justin Sandercoe will take you from novice to expert for free at justinguitar.com. The way he teaches and structures his lessons will probably appeal to a lot of programmers. Also one of the nicest people in the world.
Justin's video lessons are just fantastic. I sometimes can't believe they are free.