

Udacity aims to teach 160,000 students statistics - rayvega
http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/2098135/Udacity-aims-to-teach-160000-students-statistics.html

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cpunks
Whoever wrote the article should take the course. Lots of numbers are wrong.
The plot was wrong -- MIT would take over 2000 years to reach 160,000 students
with the intro stats course, not 40. Of course, it's actually a bit less than
that -- most MIT students take some course that includes stats. One name per
second is over a day, not 4 hours and 27 minutes. Etc.

I tried to post a correction, but it's 'awaiting moderation'. Traditional
technique for scammy magazines for avoiding negative comments.

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pauljburke
This is just an introductory course (as stated in the original article) that
I'm signed up for, more to see what it's like than to learn the material
(after 5 years of econometrics and 3 years of statistics I'd like to think I
knew this stuff). Not the only course I've signed up for (Logic and Discrete
maths etc.) but the only one where they got in touch asking us to push it to
others - they're obviously trying to break some sort of record with this one.
Which I hope they manage. Given how much regular university education costs
I'm hoping this catches on before any of my kids want to go.

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millerfung
Has anyone done codecademy before or any other free online programming course
and how does this Udactiy compares to those? What would you suggest for a
total beginner, start off with Udacity? Or together with other courses to
replace each other's weaknesses?

Is Udacity specialize for teaching programming? Or like MitX where they are
just free online education providers?

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bira
Start with Udacity, it's university-grade material thought by college
professors and/or highly experienced professionals while Codecademy (at the
moment) is more like an interactive tutorial that walk you through how to do
simple, practical stuff like building an html work, how to use CSSs etc.

You can benefit from both, depending on what you want to build and at what
stage of your project you are in.

I would start with Udacity, but be advised it's going to be no cakewalk.

I have no deep experience with MitX (nor Coursera) though I checked them out
briefly and they seem to provide insane quality considering they come with no
price tags.

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redwood
I'm taking CS101 (Python) from Udacity now. Loving it: such a nifty little
system they have of getting this information across.

Is the Stats class going to be just basic stats? or are they going to show
programming methods for stats?

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mapleoin
You can find out more about it on the course's webpage:
<http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/st101/CourseRev/1>

The video says that they will have an optional track for programming with
statistics.

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pooriaazimi
40 or 50 thousand (at the very best) will end up actually taking the course
though...

Still, impressive.

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Nursie
If the attrition rate is anything like the crypto course from coursera then
around 3-4000 of those will end up finishing the course and achieving a pass.

Which I would argue is still impressive...

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tikhonj
I'm not familiar with the courses in question, but my impression is that basic
statistics is much easier than basic crypto. Obviously, either one could be
made arbitrarily difficult, but I've seen more people struggle with things
like RSA than with T-tests and distributions.

Also, I think statistics knowledge is more relevant, especially to everyday
life, than crypto. Not to say that crypto is unimportant, but statistics is
applicable everywhere and changes how you view pretty much everything.

So I think there are some reasons for the stats course to have less attrition
than crypto.

It would be interesting to see the attrition of other similar classes at both
Udacity and Coursera.

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Nursie
That would be an interesting comparison, but I'm not sure what it would show.
Comparative difficulty of course material? How good the platforms are? The
required student time investment? Perceived rewards? All of these probably
contribute in some way

It certainly is a wide new world of possibilities, especially for those of us
who want to continue semi-structured learning outside of a university
environment.

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Create
A single lecture of the most simple and most significant equation everybody
should know:

youtu.be/umFnrvcS6AQ

The rest is distraction in the current "economy".

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nhebb
> youtu.be/umFnrvcS6AQ

Or, you could just watch "The Trouble with Tribbles"

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planetguy
So it's a bunch of video lectures covering material combined with exercises
you can do to check your own reasoning?

Congratulations, you've invented the textbook. In video form! Don't get me
wrong, a textbook is a nice useful resource, but it's not some kind of
"revolution in higher education". The option has always been there to learn
stats 101 from the book.

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0003
I would say it is more a refinement of the classroom than a re-invention of
the textbook.

Most of the classes have an overall project that motivate students to see the
way through the end and all of these courses have consistency with the design
of the other offered courses. Together with the forum and passionate, all-star
teachers I would say this is the closest we have come to the future shape of
education.

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instakill
Have also signed up.

