
58,000 Sign Up for Stanford AI Course - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html?_r=1&hp
======
linhir
I am most excited about the machine learning course, since I could use the
structure to go through Andrew Ng's lectures; also the ones from 2008 are
already out of date.

As for the AI course, I'm skeptical, frankly. Sign-up right now has meant
putting your name and email address. There is a big difference between
spending 2 second to fill that in, and spending the amount of time necessary
to finish the course. You come to a website that sounds like making robots and
turns out the class is about developing pruning heuristics for search trees,
do you stick with it? Maybe...but I'm going to save my awe for how many people
complete.

I praise Stanford (CS) for thinking up this idea. Like Khan, they are going to
reach a lot of people, and I think its particularly useful for motivated
learners who, for whatever reason, are stuck in a place that you can't take a
good AI course or can't afford one. Ultimately, though, the course is going to
require drive that a lot fewer than 65,000 have.

~~~
v21
If 1% of sign ups complete the course .. that's still 5800 people. Which is
pretty good reach. And then add in all the people who didn't complete, or look
at the materials afterwards, or who are otherwise affected by the project...
These people don't have enough drive to get the full benefit, but they do get
some benefit for sure.

~~~
SeoxyS
Nice try, but 1% of 58,000 is 580.

~~~
v21
Yeah, that's a pretty stupid mistake. My bad!

I still stand by my other, less retarded point, though.

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Homunculiheaded
I'm really curious what affect this will have on Universities with relatively
poor teachers in these areas. I remember taking algorithms with a very nice
but not altogether great teacher, so in the evenings I would follow up class
with the appropriate lecture of from the MIT OCW algorithms course.

I've worked in higher-ed awhile and been a student for many, many years and
noticed that independent of the quality of the school there are always smart,
ambitious students to be found (the density just changes). I can imagine a
relatively near future were the brightest students start class having already
finished the course material at Standford, smiling and nodding at a relatively
clueless prof. I've heard that there are highschools that assign their
students the khan lectures for homework and in class do the exercises
together, it would be interesting to see universities start to go this
direction (where poorer profs would essentially become long distance TAs for
Norvig et al.)

~~~
puredemo
It's absolutely a revolution in education. None of what you mention was
possible ten years ago when I was in college.

~~~
shard
Maybe a bit farther than 10 years. I watched CS lectures online back in 2000
for my USC classes.

~~~
puredemo
Fair enough. It was when Quakeworld was extremely popular, so a little more
than ten years. ;)

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xbryanx
I'm curious if any of the Stanford students who are paying thousands for this
course are worried about the diminished return they might get from their
professor. Don't get me wrong, I love this idea as the free recipient, I'm
just curious if students who are paying, and obviously getting lots more, have
any views on this.

~~~
a3camero
The scrutiny that this course will attract because of its popularity might
actually encourage a higher standard of teaching for this course than many
others that are offered. It could be a win for everyone.

~~~
startupfounder
They can also use the data the crowd is generating, these are big data guys.

Also, students are going to be trying harder because they are going to be
competing against the world. Imagine if no in-class student was in the top
1,000?

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robryan
Government should sponsor this kind of thing, seems like there are a lot of
people out there that want to learn more and these kind of quality courses
should scale fairly well. Sure it won't replace the real course but it will
teach a lot of people a lot of things.

Really the only thing holding this kind of thing back from dramatically
improving education efficiency is the old thinking rigid degree requirements.

~~~
smackfu
You can get Teaching Company DVDs from a lot of libraries. Basically the same
idea but lower tech, and government subsidized.

But then, I am a big believer that a great teacher on tape is far better for
the students than a good or OK teacher in person.

~~~
wisty
It's not really. The most useful thing a teacher can do is give feedback. That
said, one student among 300 doesn't get a lot of feedback.

~~~
smackfu
How about "great lecturer or speaker" over "great teacher"? Because a 300:1
lecture by an ok lecturer is much less useful (bordering on worthless) than a
recorded one by a great lecturer. And that mediocre lecture is what you will
get in most schools for intro classes.

~~~
wisty
... which are often the ones with 300 students, and no useful feedback. I
agree.

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ahalan
I bet ~5% will complete the course

here is the number of views for Andrew Ng's Intro to machine learning course
on youtube (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E> )

lec 1, 206612

lec 2, 91234

lec 3, 49000

lec 4, 36823

lec 5, 27782

lec 6, 26347

lec 7, 22075

lec 8, 20713

lec 9, 15665

lec 10, 14142

lec 11, 16573

lec 12, 14296

lec 13, 12401

lec 14, 15022

lec 15, 12290

lec 16, 10760

lec 17, 8986

lec 18, 13639

lec 19, 10219

lec 20, 11373

~~~
nplusone
These lectures are also available on iTunes U. It would be interesting to
compare the number of YouTube views to the number of iTunes downloads. I
watched the first two classes on YouTube, and downloaded the rest on iTunes,
though admittedly I'm still only on lecture 6.

~~~
jmilloy
This sort of thinking is supported also by the fact that the number of views
is not strictly decreasing.

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nazgulnarsil
and just like any math based course at a community college 3/4ths will have
dropped by the midterm.

~~~
mhartl
We should run a betting pool for this. I'd bet at even money than more than
90% of online signups fail to complete the course. Give me decent odds and
I'll bump that up to 95%

~~~
baddox
I think you're being way too optimistic. I'm guessing about 5% of sign-ups
will ever actually follow the course once it starts, and of those, I'm
guessing less than 5% of those people will complete the course.

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drallison
HN readers may find another free Stanford course of interest: EE380, the
Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium. The Colloquium meets w4:15-5:30
throughout the academic year and moves re-runs during summer quarter. Lectures
can be seen live, viewed in real-time over the web, viewed on-demand over the
web, and eventually find their way onto YouTube, iTunes, and elsewhere.
<http://ee380.stanford.edu>.

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lylejohnson
Official registration hasn't opened yet, right? I haven't received any
additional info since I initially submitted my name and email address a few
weeks ago.

~~~
misuse-permit
Correct, the real headline was "58,000 Want Course."

Kind of sensationalist of mhb to change it like that, unless NYT secretly
updated the article, which I've heard they're fond of doing.

~~~
AdamTReineke
Most likely NYT updated it. Easy mistake for someone not familiar with this
topic to make.

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bulletsvshumans
It would be an interesting twist if someone were to sign up an AI bot, using
machine learning to work its way through the course.

~~~
AdamTReineke
That's the homework for their machine learning class (ml-class.org). ;-)

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ChuckMcM
I really love this experiment. When I was in High School I was fortunate to be
able to audit some University classes for which there wasn't an equivalent in
my school district (numerical analysis and fortran programming). That allowed
me to 'bank' time which would have nominally been wasted waiting to reach
'college age' or 'post HS diploma'. This is much more common today and my kids
have all benefited from it.

This experiement is sort of the next step. If we can combine that with free
access to a syllabus of seminal papers (vs paying $36 each from some Journal
publisher) it will allow a lot of people more time to do great things.

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smackfu
I think this is a great idea, but I'm not sure emphasizing the number of sign-
ups at this point is smart.

They don't even have a CAPTCHA and don't verify the emails besides basic
email@doman.tld. So hopefully they are removing bounces from the counts.

~~~
ordinary
In fairness, these are _AI experts_. Surely they, more than anyone, know how
to reliably distinguish people from non-people?

~~~
veyron
that's what they said about financial experts ...

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robjohnson
iTunes U was a big step in the proliferation of higher-quality education to
the masses. It's nice to see Universities like Stanford spearhead
revolutionary innovations to give the opportunity of learning from world class
academicians to people who would have otherwise never dreamed of it. Bravo!

~~~
javert
_iTunes U was a big step in the proliferation..._

A big step backwards, from what I can tell.

Sharing video recordings of class lectures on the Web is easy: record video,
upload to Web. Why is there a need to do it through iTunes? AFAIK, iTunesU is
just a way for Apple to try to get campus lock-in. I know this sounds kind of
rant-ish, but I'm being 100% serious and honest.

My school started using iTunesU, which didn't seem to have any advantages over
just putting video online, except that I couldn't use it, since I can't run
iTunes on my computer (Linux).

I'd honestly like to know what benefits iTunesU has for anyone besides Apple
and Microsoft, in the sense that if it became truly widespread, it would
prevent any widespread movement to adopt Linux on campus.

~~~
iqster
I see your point about not having access to the iTunes content on Linux. Fair
point that should be addressed.

That said, I'm a big fan of iTunesU. I like the ability to download courses on
my iOS devices and listening to the lectures on trains or at the gym. Also,
they must save a lot on bandwidth by letting people download the videos (I go
through the lectures a couple of times at least).

~~~
qu
You are saying this as if you cannot download videos and view them on an iOS
device from any other source. I believe it is possible to just download a
video and start watching. How does the iTunes software help to make that
process better? Also many people do not have an iOS product.

~~~
iqster
The iTunes software sucks quite badly. Don't get me started.

However, the end-user experience for downloading videos from iTunesU and
playing it on an iOS is excellent. It is almost a one-click experience. This
is just my opinion as a user.

I'm curious, on a vanilla iOS device, what application would you use to
download a video on a website and have it cache onto your device?

I agree that if you don't have an iOS device, this doesn't work.

~~~
javert
Well, guess we should all go buy iOS devices, so we can have a great one-click
experience watching lectures produced by public universities that are paid for
by taxpayer dollars and ought to be freely accessible.

(Sorry if I'm rubbing it in too hard, you've been very gracious in this
discussion.)

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tassl
Any reason on why they are compacting the courses during the Fall quarter? It
could be interesting to have AI and ML separated in Fall-Winter quarters.

Anybody knows if they plan on doing something similar in future quarters?

I love the idea, and I am excited to see the results of this methodology.

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geoffw8
I just found it through the database course and signed up. Just got a taste of
machine learning etc via <http://blog.saush.com/>

Hoping not all of it will go over my head!

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derrida
What is the name of the Stanford Course on compilers? I WANT I WANT!

------
bane
So is this the eventual commoditization of a university education on the
horizon or what?

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NY_Entrepreneur
Learning is not a spectator sport. For material that is solid and clearly
presented in a book, for a good student with good preparation and good
motivation, it is enough for the student to study the book independently or
nearly so. Indeed, such is nearly necessary.

E.g., in 'research', how do you think the necessary background material is
obtained? By signing up for 'courses'? Nope! Instead, the researcher gets the
background materials, learns what is needed, and then gets on with the
research. A researcher can't get paid just for getting the background
material; instead, the researcher has to just do that seemingly effortlessly!
Well, students, once they reach a suitable level of educational 'maturity',
can too!

E,g,, here on HN are many thousands of programmers who use computer hardware
and software they never saw in a course. So, HN readers learned on their own.
Such self-education has long been a central feature of the US computer
industry.

Net, researcher, HN reader, or serious student, all can learn solid material
without a course, and do.

Actually, learning outside a course is sometimes in academics considered
almost 'cheating'! So, if a course is to be a 'filter', a competition, a
'stress test', then for a student to have worked carefully through solid texts
on the material before the course lets them in the course effortlessly blow
away all the students who started with the material only in the course. So,
can get comments such as "Best student in the class by a wide margin, but
apparently knew most of the material before the course.". So, there's commonly
no doubt that it's possible to learn the material outside the course and to
learn it well enough to lead the class in a corresponding course. Indeed, such
self study can move forward at the student's own pace, faster some places,
slower others, and, net, learn without gaps or wasted effort.

Net, course or not, the actual learning is mostly or entirely from what the
student does with the material alone in a quiet room.

Of course, again, to get this good situation of self learning, need solid
material clearly presented in, say, a book. Some subjects, sadly, are so vague
that no such book can exist; in that case, maybe a course is 'needed', i.e.,
so that a student can soak up nonsense that couldn't be written down in solid
form! For such, wander over to one of the 'humanities' departments and take
one of the courses in 'political correctness'!

~~~
dvse
Certainly nothing beats a good book, but often a good lecturer can give some
intuition or motivations that are not customarily written down. I think a
great example of this would be material on convex optimization released by
Stephen Boyd (<http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee364a/videos.html>), also from
Stanford - certainly his style is not as precise as e.g. Bertsekas, but
probably much better at helping students to get a sense of how to actively
work with those ideas.

~~~
NY_Entrepreneur
Is Boyd still talking about convexity?

Convexity is an important concept, and the world is just awash in rock solid
treatments.

So, for some positive integer n, consider n-dimensional Euclidean space.
Suppose C is a closed, convex subset and point x in the space is not in C.
Then there exists a closed half space that covers C and omits x. The boundary
of this closed half space can share a point with the boundary of the closed
half space so that the plane of the half space is 'supporting' for C. So, this
is a 'separation' result. Yes, it generalizes past finite dimensional
Euclidean spaces! Yes, it's a darned useful theorem! E.g., can ask for the
point in C closest to x -- the point has to exist since C is closed. Then the
plane through this point and perpendicular to the line to x is supporting for
C. So, can get a nice projection result and use it for optimization and best
approximation.

Okay, my point: This result is one of the most important about convexity but
is standard in 'analysis'. I first saw the result in the 'advanced calculus'
book, Fleming, 'Functions of Several Variables'.

Bigger point: Convexity pops up frequently in analysis. E.g., there is
Jensen's inequality. With it can easily knock off a nice list of otherwise
difficult to prove inequalities. E.g., in the L^p spaces, we can use Jensen's
inequality to get Holder's and Minkowski's inequalities.

When we start with optimization, we should start with convex sets and also
convex functions. E.g., there is a nice list of theorems of the alternative
that are separation results for cones and polyhedra that can be used to
establish some otherwise tricky results about duality in linear programming
and are also key to the Kuhn-Tucker conditions in non-linear programming. Of
course, the feasible region in linear programming is a convex set.

In non-linear programming maximization, there is a non-linear dual that is to
minimize a convex function, and that can be the core of the powerful technique
of Lagrangian relaxation.

When we have a norm on a vector space, the locus of all points distance 1 from
the origin is convex.

In facility location we can be minimizing a convex function and doing so by
constructing a sequence of planes supporting the hypergraph of the convex
function.

Alas, I never heard a lecture from Boyd!

There are plenty of rock solid, highly polished books where the role of
complexity is made clear!

~~~
dvse
Absolutely it is possible to get a good high level picture of a field without
taking any particular class. Moreover things like "convex optimization" can be
done in the footnotes of a serious maths course. But on the other hand until
there are again 300+ people functional analysis classes like in the old soviet
union, this is perhaps the best there is.

~~~
NY_Entrepreneur
Yup, Kolmogorov and Fomin -- NICE book. I never learned from it, but I believe
that eventually I got a copy, looked through it, and liked it.

If Boyd has some nice engineering applications, terrific!

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jsavimbi
So how many signed up for the DB course?

