

Stanford University Free Class: Design and Analysis of Algorithms I - ziyadb
http://www.algo-class.org/

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pcestrada
I'm stunned... I've already signed up for ML, was thinking crypto, and now
this? Some people dream of winning the lottery, I would be happy for a 6 month
sabbatical from my full time job to immerse myself in these classes. I've
currently taking the AI class and a enjoy it immensely. I feel the my 'bag of
programming tools' has grown exponentially with all the stuff I'm learning.

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Vivtek
I'm taking ML now and it's pretty darned good.

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zura
ML class is good, but I'm bit disappointed regarding programming assignments -
it is just a translation of the given math formulas to the Octave/MATLAB
syntax.

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brown9-2
I agree with your description but I'm not sure if I'd call it disappointing.
However I think it'd be really exciting if the class offered some sort of
final project where you had to use the algorithms on some new domain of your
own choosing (although of course you don't need a class to do this on your
own).

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zura
Exactly, regarding final project or similar, where students could demonstrate
some creativity and come up with original solutions. Actually, I put more
emphasis in "bit" word, before "disappointed".

But otherwise, it is really a great course - such an amount of practical
information in such a short time.

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plinkplonk
The ideal situation is that other Universities get into the game, so we can
pick and choose courses from specific professors - one course from MIT and
another from Stanford and so on.

Another thing I'd like to see is this idea expanding beyond CS to, say, Math
and Physics. Within CS it would be great to see courses on Compilers,
Operating Systems and so on. Yes I am greedy :p (and the courses are
addictive!)

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bajsejohannes
Why stop there? I hope we'll get an online version of every university course
out there!

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_delirium
I think this might actually favor consolidation. With physical classrooms, you
need hundreds of universities, but once a few universities are teaching an
online Algorithms course in which thousands of people can enroll, it may be
hard for additional universities, especially those with less exalted brand
names than Stanford, to attract interest/students.

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johnfn
I'm a Stanford student, and I can tell you that Roughgarden is one of the best
lecturers at Stanford. If you're thinking about taking a class, I would highly
recommend this one. Plus, the material is awesome.

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spicyj
Which Stanford course does this correspond to?

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plinkplonk
looks like CS 161
[https://courseware.stanford.edu/pg/courses/214383/cs-161-fal...](https://courseware.stanford.edu/pg/courses/214383/cs-161-fall-2011)

Can anyone (at Stanford or otherwise) tell me if there is a follow up course?
The (online) course title says "Design and Analysis of Algorithms I". Is there
a Design and Analysis of Algorithms II (or III or IV)?

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davidtgoldblatt
There's the following algorithms class CS 261 (upper-level
undergraduate/masters) and CS 361b (mostly aimed at phd students, though
undergraduates take it). 161 covers all the material you would expect to see
in an undergrad algorithms class. I'd be surprised if 261 or 361b are put
online, since they're not usually recorded and (at least when I took them)
have between 10 and 20 students.

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plinkplonk
"I'd be surprised if 261 or 361b are put online, since they're not usually
recorded and (at least when I took them) have between 10 and 20 students."

Isn't that the exact reason they should be put online though? If there are say
5,000 students worldwide (vs 150,000 for the AI course) that is still a
massive multiple. I sincerely hope Stanford doesn't stop at the "Introduction
to X" courses. The upcoming "Probablistic Graphics Models" class seems
reasonably advanced, and is hopefully a harbinger of things to come.

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_delirium
I think smaller classes are trickier to online-ify in a way. With large
lectures, they're already somewhat public, so recording them doesn't change
things a lot. With a 10-person class, you often have more of a seminar-style
discussion, with a lot of back-and-forth between students and professor and
less of a pre-planned, one-way lecture. That might be harder to record well,
and I think the seminar-style discussion might also suffer if students were
"on the record", knowing that they were being broadcast rather than just
chatting with the 10 people in the room.

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sjmulder
I’m seriously considering taking half a year off to work on several of these
classes, supported by a part time job. There’s just so much in there that we
never properly treated at uni (bachelor level).

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robryan
Yeah, I did 2 ai based classes, a probability class and tackled nlp for my
honors thesis and still find I'm learning a fair bit from the ai class.

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alexanderberman
Wow, the amazing classes just keep on coming! Stanford is really doing a
phenomenal thing by making all of these classes free to the public!

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queensnake
.. it's raining free classes this weekend! Must be a deadline Monday :)

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pbh
Is this a CVPR reference, or just an amazingly accurate comment?

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mrleinad
They´re like pokemon. Gotta have them all!

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beagledude
Honestly, I'm more excited about these classes from Stanford than Christmas.
This is the one I've been waiting for, thanks Santa!

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innocentques
I am amazed that Stanford is taking this idea and running with it. Khan
Academy established the need and feasibility of the parallel education system.
It is much better than the other types of open course ware. I am beginning to
think there are going to be a lot more. And I am desperately wishing for some
electrical engineering classes.

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woodson
EE classes of the signal processing variety?

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innocentques
Yeah, would mark out if that happened.

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luke1294
I don't think I've ever heard of anyone marking out for signal processing, but
I'm liking it. I think we need to combine all of the terminology- 'Fourier was
such a spotmonkey' or something.

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almost_usual
This guy is a great lecturer, I'm working through his CS161 videos right now.

You can get a sample of what his lectures will probably be like here
[http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/CoursePage.php?...](http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/CoursePage.php?course=IntroToAlgorithms)

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NnamdiJr
Know anywhere I can download those vids from? Streaming is a bit slow from
where I am..

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zura
Great! Now I'm waiting for the Compilers class.

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gnonsense
What are the expectations for someone who signs up for a course? Are there
ramifications if one does not complete the material? I want to sign up for
this, but I have three other college classes to take at the same time (with
extracurriculars), and I'm not positive I could keep up for the entire
semester.

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ChrisCooper
It's completely free to take, and no one will hassle you if you don't do
anything at all.

In addition, at least for the ones that happened this fall, if you are taking
the advanced stream, you can drop down to the beginner one at any time.

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joeyespo
Is there a central place to get a list of all the classes? (Aside from the
bottom of these individual pages)

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corey
I'm currently loving Jennifer Widom's DB class, and I'm excited about this and
ML next quarter.

I really hope this phenomenon spreads outside of their CS department; I'd love
it if there were some pure math classes(like real analysis and abstract
algebra) in this format.

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stordoff
I've been doing ML class this quarter, and it has been very good. Andrew Ng is
a great teacher, and the programming exercises are a great addition.

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rodh257
This may have been answered in one of the many other threads on these, but are
they going to run these regularly? There's so many I want to do but I don't
have time to do them all at once. Have they said that they will run them later
next year?

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mousa
I don't believe the ai class profs have mentioned it yet. The db professor
sounds like she is going to do it again next year same time, but hasn't said
so definitively. ML class is happening next semester again.

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tnip
I'm pretty amped about this, to be honest. Gives me a way to take an
Algorithms class a semester early, and it serves as a good kick in the rear
too! (Well, hopefully not so much the latter - just excited to be able to take
the class!)

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alanav
Like he said: "the key class to ace the technical interviews." So true.

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roxtar
I am guessing there are three more classes to come. That way the rows showing
the classes, at the bottom of each class page, will be nice and symmetrical.

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motxilo
To make everything nice and symmetrical, think of a "square" of classes.

