
Ask HN: How much would you pay for a serious online course? - lambdacalc
Fellow hackers, I am a former academic and current data scientist. I have been getting feedback that I explain technical and mathematical topics well for a few years but never took the comments seriously.<p>I am finally considering putting together courses on topics in machine learning and optimization that are hopefully both detailed and practical but start from first principles. An example is a course on discrete optimzation using simulated annealing. Ideally, I would like to put up the content on Udemy (infrastructure&#x2F;marketing taken care of but they take a cut) or host my own site (I keep the profits but have to manager everything).<p>Towards that end, how much would you be willing to spend for a course ($0 is a perfectly acceptable answer)? I see people put up courses for $100-$200 on Udemy and that seems really high to me but maybe people do pay that much.<p>The end goals are 1) to demystify some of the topics that I enjoy, 2) to supplement my full-time income so I can scale back full-time work to do more open-source work and teaching.<p>Thanks in advance!
======
goldenbeet
It depends on the quality of the course and how close it aligns with my goals.

Ex: Udacity's SDC Nanodegree amounts to $2400, but was worth every penny for
me. On the other hand, there are numerous machine learning courses on Udemy,
and most of them I wouldn't pay for at all (even at $5-$10).

In the latter case, most of the content is either non valuable (its stuff
that's repeated all over the internet) or non practical (can talk a lot about
theory or math but if I don't actually build anything it doesn't help me).

------
AbenezerMamo
If the $100 is a barrier of entry for you, I'm willing to purchase for the
course for you. No one should ever feel that an education should be out of
reach. Email me at Abe@Mamo.io and take me up on it.

