

Stanford profs from DB & Machine Learning class are founding a company Coursera - dhawalhs
https://plus.google.com/b/107809899089663019971/107809899089663019971/posts/4VuN2RsRggB

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droithomme
Daphne Koller was not the DB professor, she was scheduled to teach a class
starting this month, but has not taught any online classes yet. The DB teacher
was Jennifer Widom, who is not part of the initiative described in the
article.

~~~
dhawalhs
Oops...my bad. Daphne Koller is the instructor for the upcoming Probabilistic
Graphical Models class <http://www.pgm-class.org/>

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wyuenho
All I want to know is, will Andrew Ng still teach the ML class on Stanford or
only on Coursera now? I haven't taken his new ML class yet but a large part of
why I want to sign up for that class in the Spring quarter is because of him.

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MaxGabriel
Are these companies (Coursera here, Udacity for Thrun) going to be non-profits
like Khan Academy?

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unignorant
No, both are for-profit. This caused a bit of a stir among their fellow
academics.

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endtime
Seriously? At Stanford? Every professor other than Daphne (I believe) at the
AI lab has worked for Google at some point and Stanford is the last place
where CS profs look down upon starting companies.

~~~
unignorant
Starting a company wasn't the issue. It's more that for-profit education has a
bad reputation (think University of Phoenix). There was some initial
concern/confusion.

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endtime
How is Stanford not a for-profit institution? I'm not trying to be
argumentative, I think I must just be missing some distinction.

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mikek
Non-profit organizations are registered as so to the IRS in the United States:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization>

~~~
endtime
So what "caused a bit of a stir" was a tax status?

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fooyc
This is awesome.

I guess this is why the 2012 ML class is delayed; I'm wondering if it will
still happen :(

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technotony
Not just the ML course. I signed up for one on human computer interaction,
high tech entrepreneurship and lean startup and they have all been delayed
indefinitely. It's a pity as I did Sebastian Thun's AI course and it was great
and I was looking forward to these others... so the consumer isn't always
winning as these companies fight it out, I think they should just put the
material out for free it would create many new startups!

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benblodgett
This is an interesting space, mit has their mitx program set to launch this
spring as well.

<http://mitx.mit.edu>

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frrp
Competition is always good for the customers, so I really like it. I also
expect O'Reilly Media to push harder in this direction, it's only natural...

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kunj2aan
It's surprising that they wouldn't collaborate with Sebastian Thrun (AI), who
I think is also founding a company.

~~~
codeonfire
It's not surprising if you understand academic politics. If you go to many
research presentations, you'll be amazed to see people openly deriding the
presenter's work to their face. Collaboration is something valued by people
who greatly depend on others. So it's normal for most people to think that
collaboration is something that is desirable, and it is for the average
person. If you are trying to be the world's leading expert in something that
no one else understands, depending on others will be an avenue of attack for
your detractors. It is far better for a very capable person to take on market
forces rather than internal politics.

~~~
sanderjd
As a disclaimer: I don't claim to understand academic politics. Having said
that, I think you need some sort of citation or at the very least a stronger
argument to back up the statement that "collaboration is something valued by
people who greatly depend on others". To a non-involved observer such as
myself, what you're describing (in a positive tone?) just sounds petty and
extremely unproductive for everyone involved, whether they're average or "very
capable".

~~~
codeonfire
If one depends greatly on someone else to achieve things, then by definition
they value collaboration. I assume we are still talking about academics
because there could exist people who simply don't want to accomplish anything
and therefore don't value collaboration. It's no secret either that people who
are highly capable don't need collaboration except to meet societal and
political expectations or to reduce their workload. Again, that follows from
the definition of highly capable.

What would be a far more interesting research topic would be to measure
negative reaction to any notion that some people can work better alone and any
correlations those sentiments might entail.

~~~
sanderjd
I'm sorry for being dense, but you still haven't convinced me that "people who
are highly capable don't need collaboration" is implied by the definition of
"highly capable". Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, etc. - these people are
all highly capable and all collaborated to achieve their greatest successes.
Are we using different definitions of "collaboration"?

Your proposed research topic would be a lot more interesting without the
inherent bias you introduce by measuring only the correlations of negative
reaction and ignoring any correlations to positive reaction.

~~~
codeonfire
There's no evidence that their success was due to collaboration and I only
said they don't need to collaborate, not that they don't collaborate. On the
contrary, in the Bill G and Steve J cases, the general public overwhelmingly
attribute the success of their respective companies to the individual and not
to their choice in co-founders.

~~~
sanderjd
I know this is an old thread, but I just saw your response. And... I don't
quite know what to say, besides that it seems ridiculously offensive to the
hundreds and hundreds of people that made Microsoft and Apple what they are.

I don't know what type of evidence you're looking for, and I don't know what
it has to do with co-founders, but it seems pretty obvious to me that one
person couldn't have designed every piece of Apple hardware or software or
every version of Windows. That's why we invented collaboration - it gives
extremely productive people a multiplier.

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johnwatson11218
Just curious ... what would people be willing to pay for the courses?
Especially if it meant some kind of official recognition or certificate.

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nchuhoai
I don't get why they would cooperate with the dude from the ML class

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nphrk
You have some complaints about the ML class?

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ojbyrne
I found the course way too easy. This announcement makes me think they're
going to get around this - not being part of Stanford means they don't have to
worry about cannibalizing paying students. Maybe.

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denzil_correa
Delivering education is changing across the world. First, we hear about
Sebastian Thrun. Now, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller!

~~~
denzil_correa
I don't see the funny side of downvoting comments here on HN. Pathetic!

