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Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

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Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#81

Post by graycat »

selimthegrim wrote: post #62
graycat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most academic fields, work that mathematizes the field is regarded as the best. Neveu is elegant beyond belief. I keep my copy close. I was aimed at Neveu by a star student of E. Cinlar, long at Princeton and before that at Northwestern -- long editor in chief of Mathematics of Operations Research . Neveu was a student of M. Loeve at Berkeley. So was the current darling of machine learning, L. Breiman, because of…

Did Neveu ever take a detour into physics? There is a well-known QFT model with his name on it. Incidentally, I have a copy of Loeve's old probability textbook - I wonder if it is too out of date to be any use.

Loeve is terrific. The stuff there hasn't changed or been much improved on. Some people regard Loeve's book as French that sounds like English or English written as French. But Loeve students Neveu and Breiman are easier starts.

Basically we're talking graduate probability based heavily on measure theory and some on functional analysis.

Last I heard of Neveu he was back in France and at least in part working on probability for stock markets.

There are other more recent authors. It seems that a big fraction of the best researchers sometimes take out a year and write yet another book comparable with Neveu. Personally, I did enough with Loeve, Neveu, Breiman, and Chung and for more attention to such material want to use that background to move on. For now, I'm concentrating on my startup; it's based one some applied math I derived, but I've done that and programmed it. Tonight I got four hard disks installed in my first server. Three of them are partitioned and formatted, and as I type this the fourth is being partitioned and formatted.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#82

Post by heurist »

amrx101 wrote: post #67
appleiigs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US$65K for tuition

LOL. As someone from third world where local currency is enormously devalued with respect to US$, I wonder why would anyone do this?

These prices seem mostly targeted employers who offer tuition reimbursement.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#83

Post by rrdkent »

jph wrote: post #8

Berkeley and the UC schools are making major strides in online education, including edX participation and on-campus projects. If you're interested in Berkeley and data science, there's an online masters program too. (Disclosure: Berkeley is in my client roster). https://requestinfo.datascience.berkeley.edu

Currently in this Data Science Program. Happy to answer any questions anyone has if they're considering it.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#84

Post by Ar-Curunir »

jamestimmins wrote: post #5

I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects, which superficially seem to cover the same material, and relatively few courses covering more traditional CS topics such as computer systems, networks, OS. I suppose it has to do with the market, but also feels like colleges are skating to where the puck is, rather than where it will be (or perhaps, where it could be).

Our computer security course at Berkeley regularly attracts 600+ students. Berkeley is doing fine in terms of traditional course offerings.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#85

Post by Ar-Curunir »

itronitron wrote: post #69
QML wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s because data science has a more immediate, broader applicability than computer science. Not everybody needs to know how to program a full application; but they should be able to load in a dataset and statistically analyze it. Looking at the type of people taking Data 8 compared to CS61A (the introductory programming course), I would say the former is a fairly diverse crowd (political science majors, econ…

It might be more popular as many data science courses use Python and therefore students don't have to get their code to compile. Seriously though, I think people are drawn to data science out of a desire to create stories with some underlying support (data/evidence) in order to influence policy or business decisions.

61A also uses Python.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#86

Post by spraak »

analognoise wrote: post #33
barry-cotter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can learn skills that get you a job from a boot camp they’re not stupid. The fact that Lambda School and App Academy don’t get paid unless you get a job and they still exist suggests rather strongly that they get people jobs.

Skills without the foundations are going to be useless in a technology shift or economic downturn. Also getting a job is great - how about keeping one, or advancing? It seems very short sighted; community college only takes 2 years. Your career lifetime is what, 45 years? The ROI is insane, why would you shortchange yourself?

I've met a number of people with university degrees (not community college) who later on go through a boot camp. They can be a great way to change direction.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#87

Post by fapjacks »

olympus wrote: post #50
throwawayjava wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sort of technically true. Modified statement, based on extensive person experience: ~80+% had such an offer in hand, and the remaining 20% either: a) didn't bother applying but would've been shoe-ins, or else b) knew very early (freshman year) they were research-bound and optimized for a non-industry objective function (but could've skated into an industry job of their choice given a shift in undergraduate ca…

Lawyers can commission directly as captains in the USAF (and probably other branches) as long as they are not too old and can pass the fitness test. I think they also have to have passed a bar exam in one state, but it doesn't matter which one. They can get up to $65k of student loans repaid and don't even have to go through the same basic training as everyone else. So (b) is slightly less trivial than saying a succe…

Did you actually do any recruiting? Or are you like me and just sort of started inadvertently talking this way after a certain number of years?

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#88

Post by the_seraphim »

learc83 wrote: post #79
gaius wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think Berkeley's top-ranked PhD program is recruiting people who couldn't find jobs? It is well known that PhD programmes churn out far more PhDs than can reasonably be employed in their field. I mean, including friends and former colleagues I probably know maybe 300 people with PhDs. Of those I can count on my fingers those actually doing research in academia, probably one hand those on tenure track. But…

You're arguing against a point that the OP didn't make.

I mean, this is the internet right? isn't that what's expected?

Those who really excel at academical training are those who are best suited to academical training, aka professors.

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#89

Post by QML »

Someone1234 wrote: post #55
bartart wrote: post #26

People at Berkeley view this class as kind of a joke. The average grade is insanely high and the topics are covered in much less depth than just the normal intro cs or stats classes. https://www.berkeleytime.com/grades/?course1=7765-all-all

I randomly started checking other CompSci courses on that site and they all had a similarly high average grade, in some cases even higher (A instead of a B+). Which are the hard courses at Berkeley in CompSci using the site you linked?

The hardest CS undergraduate course offered is probably 189: Introduction to Machine Learning. Nonetheless that class has a B+ average; so I wouldn’t say difficulty of class correlates with a low grade average. There are others like 170 and 162 which you can check out.

If my memory holds, there’s a policy that class averages should be around 3.0-3.3 (B/B+).

Re: Berkeley offers its data science course online for free

#90

Post by soziawa »

jamestimmins wrote: post #5

I find it curious that there are so many courses for data-science related subjects, which superficially seem to cover the same material, and relatively few courses covering more traditional CS topics such as computer systems, networks, OS. I suppose it has to do with the market, but also feels like colleges are skating to where the puck is, rather than where it will be (or perhaps, where it could be).

It says fastest growing course. At my university it's also the fastest growing course. It grew from 0 to 50 students in the last semester.
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