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Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

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Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#91

Post by psyklic »

plinkplonk wrote: post #52

Prof Thrun mentioned in the last office hours that there were about 1650 people with "perfect scores" and he seemed a little thunderstruck by that and said he would admit these folks into Stanford if he could, because they are (paraphrasing, from memory)"Stanford quality". What struck me was how much importance he gave to this metric, which isn't that hard to game on an online offering. I know a few people (who shall…

I can't comment on online courses, but in general there is a HUGE difference between people who get As and people who get 100% on every single assignment. Never making a single error is an amazing feat.

I personally have only scored straight-100%s in a single course (Python programming), and that was only because I was relatively an expert in the material before the course began.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#92

Post by gfodor »

plinkplonk wrote: post #64
Technophilis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is surprising that you thought of this as a "cool AI job offer". I have two remarks here. First, the email sent to the class is barely an invitation to send resumes. Something many programmers/CS Students with online presence experience on a regular basis. Probably not from a Stanford Professor but at least from major companies recruiters. It would be interesting to know how many will actually make it through the…

"It is surprising that you thought of this as a "cool AI job offer"." I don't. That part of the post was written with tongue firmly attached to cheek. If that tone didn't come through, that means I have to improve my writing. The online ML course is CS 229A (which is also an actual course at Stanford. The online version is close to the Stanford course). The "tough" version is CS 229 (no 'A' at the end). I registered…

The ML class is not worthless. It's not sufficient, but it's definitely not worthless. I've found it to be a great survey of the field.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#93

Post by wingerlang »

WildUtah wrote: post #10

Well, I haven't received any such email and my score in the class is 98% so far (with only the final exam pending this week). I expected that around 10,000 people would have a perfect score in the class given my experience with Asian participation in online programming contests. There are a few countries in that part of the world where organizing a group to check each others' work and ensuring perfect scores is commo…

Do you know how the systems work?

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#94

Post by tzs »

buff-a wrote: post #87
tzs wrote: post #6

Drat. If I'd known they were going to do that, I'd have made sure I was in the top 1000. edit: why is this getting voted down? I would expect there are a fair number of people here who took the course with a casual approach, like I did. E.g., I usually watched the lectures early Sunday, then did the homework that night. Then, for those topics that I enjoyed and wanted in more depth, I read the sections in the book on…

My guess is that you are being modded down because your statement is of a form that many people have heard in real life and associate with poor performance. It shows a lack of thinking about jobs. However, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are young and not really worrying about such things. Basically your answer is like the classic "I could have got a 5.0, but I partied", which is a…

Actually, the modding has reversed and my comment is now at +9.

The "partying" I was doing instead of putting a non-casual effort into the class was dealing with some projects at work, and starting to read a book on analytic number theory because I'm tired of being someone who doesn't understand the proof of the prime number theorem.

> you are saying "I had no idea that a hugely publicized course at a renowned university might lead to job opportunities"

Yeah, I did not think it would lead to much in the way of job opportunities. That's because the class is just an introduction. If you compare almost any section of the class to the corresponding section in the Russell and Norvig book, you'll see that they are leaving out a lot of detail in the class. The homework in the class almost never pushes any limits of what was done in the lectures. Many of the homework problems are just things that were done in lecture with the numbers changed.

I would have expected the job opportunities to start at a deeper level than the class reaches.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#95

Post by sireat »

HilbertSpace wrote: post #71
loboman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet there are AI applications coming from Google, Apple, Microsoft and many other companies (voice products, kinect, etc.), and service based companies that work on these advanced topics too like ITA used to be. Why do you think those companies weren't interested in you? or weren't you interested in the projects they had to offer? (I'm guessing it's the latter but I could be wrong) Edit: for example some opportunitie…

I got no meaningful feedback on why I was not hired. The resumes led to only five interviews, and I'm counting phone interviews. The main issues were (1) I am a US citizen and, thus, not on an H1B and (2) I was over 50. Generally a subordinate is supposed to be younger.

Being a citizen should have been a plus(H1B is a pain), but the age could have been a factor.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#96

Post by wisty »

sbochins wrote: post #79
jpeterson wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a few people (who shall remain nameless) who collaborate and check each others Why would someone do this for a free online course that gives no credit for a degree? I mean, the whole point is to learn, not get the highest grade. I really fail to understand people sometimes.

Bragging rights?

Force of habit?

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#97

Post by cshesse »

jbermudes wrote: post #57
plinkplonk wrote: post #52

Prof Thrun mentioned in the last office hours that there were about 1650 people with "perfect scores" and he seemed a little thunderstruck by that and said he would admit these folks into Stanford if he could, because they are (paraphrasing, from memory)"Stanford quality". What struck me was how much importance he gave to this metric, which isn't that hard to game on an online offering. I know a few people (who shall…

While I agree with your general sentiment, note that at least in ML-class, you can resubmit quizzes as many times as you want for full credit. Thus over the course of an hour you can retake the quiz enough times to brute force a perfect score without breaking the letter (and arguably the spirit) of the honor code. Another interesting aspect of this "online ethics" is that there's no technical measures preventing you…

In a way, yes, the programming projects in ML seemed like a better measure of performance in that you have to actually figure something out. However, they have two (sort of) disadvantages vs normal homework:

1) you immediately know if you got it right or wrong when you submit, so you can to a lesser extent brute force the correct answer

2) with the exception of maybe the first assignment, they are all "fill in the blank" sort of programming assignments. You basically just have to find the equations they give you in the PDF, translate them directly to Octave, and bam you're done.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#98

Post by buff-a »

tzs wrote: post #94
buff-a wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that you are being modded down because your statement is of a form that many people have heard in real life and associate with poor performance. It shows a lack of thinking about jobs. However, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are young and not really worrying about such things. Basically your answer is like the classic "I could have got a 5.0, but I partied", which is a…

Actually, the modding has reversed and my comment is now at +9. The "partying" I was doing instead of putting a non-casual effort into the class was dealing with some projects at work, and starting to read a book on analytic number theory because I'm tired of being someone who doesn't understand the proof of the prime number theorem. > you are saying "I had no idea that a hugely publicized course at a renowned univer…

I would have expected the job opportunities to start at a deeper level than the class reaches.

Aptitude and interest goes a long way.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#99

Post by jgeerts »

jpeterson wrote: post #67
plinkplonk wrote: post #52

Prof Thrun mentioned in the last office hours that there were about 1650 people with "perfect scores" and he seemed a little thunderstruck by that and said he would admit these folks into Stanford if he could, because they are (paraphrasing, from memory)"Stanford quality". What struck me was how much importance he gave to this metric, which isn't that hard to game on an online offering. I know a few people (who shall…

I know a few people (who shall remain nameless) who collaborate and check each others Why would someone do this for a free online course that gives no credit for a degree? I mean, the whole point is to learn, not get the highest grade. I really fail to understand people sometimes.

Because of this:

Your final score will be calculated as 30% of the score on the top 6 of your 8 homework assignments, 30% your score on the midterm exam, and 40% your score on the final exam. For those completing the advanced track you will receive your final score as a percentage as well as your percentile ranking within all those who completed the advanced track, and this will appear on your statement of accomplishment. The statement of accomplishment will be sent via e-mail and signed by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. We hope to have them digitally signed to verify their authenticity. It will not be issued by Stanford University.

Re: Job placement program for top students in Stanford's online AI class

#100

Post by zmj »

Natsu wrote: post #90
rglullis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grading doesn't need to be manual. Think of the lab assignments being something like a smaller scale of the Netflix challenge: 1) They provide some set of data and establish rules for the competition. 2) They implement their own solution to the challenge, and that is the benchmark. 3) A "passing grade" is obtained by getting any working system. 4) The actual grading is then given on a curve, compared against thei…

Granted it wouldn't work in many other classes, but my teacher for assembly language did something like this. First, your code had to work or you got nothing. You also had some time limit, to avoid ridiculously slow, yet working code. Finally, each working submission was graded by the number of additional bytes you used above the reference implementation. And he knew all the tricks. I don't think anyone ever beat him…

Lasher at NCSU?
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