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Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

214 points by brudolph 15y ago

jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
Watch out, this guy is about to write a letter.
- absconditus 15y ago
  This is not reddit.
acslater00 15y ago
As a stanford CS grad myself, I basically concur. I took this class as a refresher for things I learned back in school. It was perfect for that. But the rigor and difficulty of the class was clearly tailored towards someone like me, who wanted to watch lecture videos over dinner for a few hours a week, rather than a full-time student. I actually wasn't aware that the online class was being offered for credit in the CS department until reading this. It surprises me that they're doing so.
- erlis 15y ago
  I did the AI class and that was not the case. Stanford students were clearly separated from the online students. We didn't get the same assignments neither.
  - dlo 15y ago
    I took CS221 last quarter. So I can say that you got the same assignments and exams; you just weren't required to do the programming assignments. While ml-class was perhaps the third iteration of putting the machine learning class online, ai-class was probably the first time someone tried to put CS221 online; the professors simply felt that they wouldn't be able to automate the assignments in the time that they had. In fact, many of the YouTube lectures, which many Stanford students seemed to prefer, were often not available to us in time for the assignments and exams.
swalsh 15y ago
I think there's a great opportunity to take online classes to the masses without sacrificing the quality of a brick and mortar education. These classes don't need to be offered free, just cheap. If they charged $10 for the whole class (a steal really!) they'd make $1,000,000 a semester per class. That should pay for the bandwidth, and teacher, and material. Scale that to less niche classes, you have a real business! I'd personally pay $10 for a class, even if it did not qualify for credit.
- pitt1980 15y ago
  I think your math is a little off, 100K signed up for the AI class, only 40K actually turned in a HW, guessing that less than 20K actually finished, guessing none of the classes this spring will have anything close to that enrollment
  - restofus 15y ago
    This was an initial experiment so I am pretty sure they will change the format a little bit later. lots of people signed up for all the classes and it was difficult to do all the three at the same time but if given the option of doing it at your own pace I do not think it will go down.
  - swalsh 15y ago
    You pay at the beginning. Whether you finish or not does not change how much you make.
    - ShardPhoenix 15y ago
      If you had to pay up-front (even $10), they'd probably have gotten <1000 signups.
tlammens 15y ago
According to the website http://cs229a.stanford.edu/ http://cs229a.stanford.edu/ there are class meetings, according to the blogpost everything is done solitary? Another difference with the course offered to the public is that there is an open ended project. If he really wanted a harder class, why not take CS229 and not CS229A... If you want something to be harder, to get more out of something you should pursue it yourself, not depend on others. I see (online) education as a guide, not as the only source of input. Selfstudy and initiative is the most important thing.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- brudolph 15y ago
  Class meetings were optional (which I did attend) and only a fraction of the students actually attended. I don't have a problem with cs229a being easier than 229, but the thing is a lot of other classes have now turned to the online format with no alternative (like 229 to 229a). Selfstudy is great, but sometimes the best way to learn is from a structured class.
  - restofus 15y ago
    <i> Selfstudy is great, but sometimes the best way to learn is from a structured class</i> Well lots of people might like to be treated like grown ups and not like the structured classes and who knows they might even write a letter asking for refund
    - overgryphon 15y ago
      I'm surprised you think being in a structured class is equivalent to being treated like a child. What school did you go to that did this?
      - restofus 15y ago
        I do not think structured classes is equivalent to being treated like a child. It was intended as a general comment that some people might not like it and equate it like that based on his comment that only a fraction people actually attended it and maybe if it was made compulsory they might not like it and there is a probability that they will say that. Just a point that what ever you do there will be some group that will not like it .
johnohara 15y ago
Put down the pen. MIT, Stanford, et.al. have already done the math on this. 20,000 "certification" exams @ $99.00 each is not insignificant. It's just shy of 40 full-time students @ $50,000 per year. Heats a lot of buildings.
- absconditus 15y ago
  Principles be damned, there is money to be made!
  - restofus 15y ago
    Really principles be damned, they are doing it for free
  - johnohara 15y ago
    I don't mean to imply that schools should be in it for the $$$. I get your point. But costs are an issue. A big issue. And right now student tuitions shoulder a large part of that burden. Stanford's total enrollment is about 20,000 students. $35,000 per year = $700,000,000. Offer 16 new online courses which yields 20,000 students per course taking a $99 final exam. $31,680,000. Less than 5% of annual tuition-based revenue. That's a new library without hitting the endowment fund, underwriting existing salaries, funding pension obligations, or adding a new facility dedicated solely to the production of online educational content. I think Leland and Jane Stanford would be proud to know that the memorial they built to their son is today moving in the direction of educating millions worldwide. It's okay to "be strong and stay strong and while being of benefit to others."
    - absconditus 15y ago
      The problem is providing a questionable education and then selling a meaningless certification to make money. These classes are also highly vulnerable to cheating and you can be sure that a large number of people will take advantage of this to pump up their resumes.
      - 15y ago
pg_bot 15y ago
I have watched a few of the online lectures offered by Stanford and I can't help but notice that the audio and video quality of the lectures is terrible. The video will not track the lecturer, and the audio will randomly cut in and out for long periods of time. (If I remember correctly, one lecture was missing half its audio) Also, I am unsure of the class sizes at Stanford but it seems like no one can arrive on time to a lecture.
- tlammens 15y ago
  The online lectures you are talking about are the ones on youtube. They are not the same as the ones used in ml-class.org. The latter ones are in a completely different format. It is not just a recording of a "normal" lecture...
  - pg_bot 15y ago
    I am talking about the open courseware offered here http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php I am unsure if these are the same videos offered on youtube, however by taking a glance at the website it looks like they are the exact same classes.
    - tlammens 15y ago
      If I understood correctly, those were a predecessor of the current lectures. I had no problems with audio missing. (but yes quality could have been better)
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- denzil_correa 15y ago
  I am not sure you're on the same page as the author.
Hyena 15y ago
This post needs a comparison with CS229a prior to the online courses. Was the course harder before online classes and then got significantly dumbed down? Or was the course easy enough that it was a good candidate for the project?
- brudolph 15y ago
  CS229a didn't exist prior to the online courses.
  - Hyena 15y ago
    Then it seems like there isn't so much a problem and the course is plausibly performing its intended function. Obviously the course was designed by Stanford to fill some role; unless you think that the course had a design flaw only detectable once it got rolling, then the best assumption would be that your expectations were wrong. Of course, you could certainly have asked, as a Stanford student, what drove the design of the course and how the professor actually felt about the execution. That would have been an interesting follow up.
diiq 15y ago
My degree is in Fine Art, and I thought the class was pointlessly easy. Fix the class in two easy steps: Lecture live, record the lectures. EVERY speaker is more effective when they have the feedback of their audience's faces. Expect the members of the public to meet the class' standard, don't shrivel the curriculum to match the public. An applied CS course that doesn't demand programming is bizarre. Flunk everyone if you have to. Grades should perhaps reflect understanding?
- CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
  I felt similarly dismayed about a machine learning course which doesn't demand knowledge of calculus.
  - restofus 15y ago
    I disagree I do not know calculus and would not have done this class if that was the case. I am now implementing ML in my day to day work . Anybody can make ML difficult , the greatness is in making it easy for people to use it and that makes a real world impact IMHO
    - denzil_correa 15y ago
      and I believe this "Anybody can make ML difficult , the greatness is in making it easy for people to use it" is the real deal.
  - balloot 15y ago
    Wow. They didn't require knowledge of calculus? I took the actual CS 229 at Stanford and a class that doesn't require calculus at all would only be able to touch on a small fraction of topics. My worry, which is similar to the worry of the student in the linked post, is that these lectures may be devaluing the in-person versions of the course. CS 229 was one of the top 5 hardest classes I have ever taken. I would rather not someone else take it via a dumbed down online lecture and say "I did that too! It wasn't so bad!"
CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
It's been over twenty years since I finished college. Last year I did a "certificate in quantitative finance" at UW which -- like the Stanford classes -- were both online and seemingly aimed at working professionals. It's interesting to compare these on three fronts: 1) The amount of rigor and work required for the Stanford classes was significantly less than the UW classes. I spent as much as 10 hours per week on the UW homework in addition to the 3-4 hours of video lectures. That's against about an hour for the Stanford homework and another 60-90 minutes for the lectures. I agree with the OP's description of the ML homework as starting out at a decent level of difficulty and quickly becoming trivially easy. 2) I found the format of the Stanford lectures considerably easier to follow. By making a canned recording, there's a huge amount of dead time which can simply be edited out of the lecture. That plus the ability to watch at 1.5x speed meant that I was rarely tempted to do something else at the same time as watching the lecture -- something which frequently caused me trouble with the UW classes. 3) The UW classes were something like $3500/course. If my employer hadn't been willing to reimburse me, I wouldn't have taken them. All-in-all, I think the Stanford classes are great experiments in which I'm happy to participate. I'm planning to take five of them in Jan-Mar.
- mikedmiked 15y ago
  Were you a quant before you took the UW classes?
  - CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
    Nope. My background is in engineering so the calculus wasn't an issue, but my stats knowledge was really weak.
    - reagan83 15y ago
      I'm interested to know if earning that cert from UW allowed you to jump in to the financial sector. I'm currently pursuing a similar path and would be interested to hear about your experiences.
Jun8 15y ago
He says: "Stanford “free” classes aren’t free. Stanford students have to pay for them. The fact that I’m paying for them doesn’t bother me, the fact that people who aren’t paying for them have changed the class more than the ones who have, does." which does seem to be a forceful point. However, checking the FAQ (http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx#aboutq2 http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx#aboutq2) we find that they are funded completely from outside sources. So this guy didn't even bother to do some basic Google checking.
- sshrin 15y ago
  As far as I know, the Stanford online courses are NOT the same as the ones listed on the SEE page. They seem to be two different initiatives. I know for sure that the ones on the SEE page are recorded video lectures from the actual live classes.
- eldina 15y ago
  Perhaps some of the funds raised for these open classes could and would have been raised for other projects relating to proper Stanford students ?
clavalle 15y ago
There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes. Example: The 'level 1' or 'core' videos and assignments can be a base and offered for free and be of a similar duration and difficulty as the class now... 'Level 2' would either replace or augment the 'level 1' and would be more advanced and require some knowledge of pre-requisites and more 'synthesis' or 'critical' style assignments and less hand holding. Maybe they could charge for access to this level... 'Level 3 etc' could go deeper into the topic and perhaps offer more mathematical rigor or dive into more advanced topics or expose students to related current research etc. The assignments could also be tougher and more free form. Depending on how much human interaction is needed on the assignments and whatnot, they could justify a much higher price... I would be very interested in a program that had this kind of format. It would allow for exploration without too much commitment but a deep dive on topics that are interesting and perhaps a window into a community of people exploring the same topics... If I were paying Stanford level tuition for the class as it stands now, I'd be a bit disappointed too.
- jmilloy 15y ago
  > There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes. Of course there is. These classes are provided for free, yet require time and money and effort. You've likely more than tripled the required resources to produce the class.
  - politician 15y ago
    There is no reason that the most difficult grades must be open to the public for free. Slap a paywall on it, a "With Student ID" bypass, and call it a day.
  - clavalle 15y ago
    I'd be happy to pay, especially for the higher levels. But it would be nice to explore topics at the most shallow level for free or at a low price to see if it covers what I expect in a manner that I find useful. Basically, a funnel.
kenjackson 15y ago
It's unclear to me if this guy didn't learn enough or if it just wasn't hard enough. I do personally think that some courses are hard for the sake of being hard. If he learned the material stated in the syllabus and it was easy, then that's a really great thing and a tribute to the teaching.
- DennisP 15y ago
  Some courses are hard for the sake of being hard, because they are intended to filter out students who can't hack it. The degree is proof that you had the intelligence and determination to earn it. When you're not awarding a degree anyway, that consideration is irrelevant, and the only requirement is to teach as clearly and effectively as you can.
restofus 15y ago
tldr; The experts make it look impossible but the masters make it look easy and actually teach you Just ranting out here so feel free to ignore :-) This is not really aimed at the author but towards the "elite" group. There was another elite commentator in one of the other thread who said he dropped out of ML class because This course included gems such as "if you don't know what a derivative is, that is fine" and he thought math was important in ML. Before the ML class I could not even argue with these guys because I did not know squat about AI and talking to these experts their advice was to take a year off and learn math and then start learning AI which in my case was not possible. Today after a couple of months of online classes I am actually using ML in my daily work and its not magic that only the elite with deep profound math knowledge can use. Another programmer who is working in khan academy actually had a blog post about how he implemented ML by learning from Prof Andrew's class now that is real world impact. I may be missing something but can one of you experts please explain why you need deep math knowledge when the professor who has been doing a lot of research in this field a lot more than you does not think so ?. The professor in his classes keeps reassuring that even after using it for so many years he has difficulty in the subject but I'm guessing these experts know it all :-). This is the reason in my opinion even though wall street is full of smart people they do not care about the rest of the population or the general masses the attitude is we are smart and we can do what we want you guys are dumb and deserve what you get and if someone outside of their elite group starts talking their language they do not like it. On a similar note when you look at the people complaining about khan academy most of them are these so called smart people. Let me talk about my background I have been working as a programmer for around 11 years , no math background though thought myself math by using Khan academy and before my layoff (now am working on my own startup ) used to make 90K (in a southern state). So guys you are not the center of the world we are crashing into your fraternity you are no longer the only experts who can talk about ML , the guys at stanford are smarter than you and know what they are doing and FYI they don't need you its the other way around. Another interesting thing is that mostly the current students seem to agree with the author, If you are smart you should probably take the effort to learn more rather than asking them to tailor the classes to what you think matters . Also ask yourself this question if you were the Professor what do you think is more satisfying teaching 40 full time students or 20000 who are in the field already and make more impact in the field ?.
chl 15y ago
My impression was that the course was designed to give someone with little or no background in machine learning a maximally useful amount of practically relevant information given a multitude of constraints (ergo the focus on Andrew Ng's favourite implementation tricks of the trade, learning curves &c.; each of dozens of such nuggets having the potential to save days, weeks or even months in real projects). If that was indeed the goal, the endeavour should, in my opinion, be considered an amazing success. An easy way to make the assignments harder (and maybe more fulfilling), if you have the time, might be to ignore much of the handholding (e.g. by porting everything to a very different programming environment). Ideally, online courses like that would be "infinite" and personalized, giving everyone as much depth (and breadth!) as desired (with a "baseline" approximately equal to the 2011 class) and taking existing knowledge into account. Eventually, we'll all get our Primer!
juanre 15y ago
I took the AI class, and I also saw a degradation of the difficulty. At the beginning it was great. I even undusted my old 48SX, and had lots of fun: they actually made me think. But some of the lessons towards the end were almost a joke: I sure don't need to spend time applying a trivial formula back and forth, as we did in the computer vision lessons (deriving it would have been a slightly more interesting exercise.) I don't know if Stanford students were paying for this, but I'd not be very happy if I had. On the other hand, I am very happy that they are doing it, and I intend to take as many as my time will allow. And I wish they'll figure out a way to charge a small fee for having "Stanford" in the title in some manner, so that they don't have to spend about half of the certificate of accomplishment making sure that everybody understands that this is _not_ an actual Stanford certificate.
laibert 15y ago
I'm not sure I understand how opening up classes to the online world would would affect the coursework of Stanford students. If the author felt that CS229a was not rigorous enough, he should have just taken CS229 whose problem sets could double as full-time jobs. Morever, a good chunk of stanford CS classes are already offered online through SCPD (the professional development system) and as far as I know, the structure of those classes remain unchanged.
denzil_correa 15y ago
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -- Leonardo Da Vinci
jmares 15y ago
I took CS229 at Stanford. ml-class.org does a phenomenal job in equipping you with the practical knowledge needed to apply the tools of machine learning to real problems. There is no reason why learning to use these tools should be hard. If you want a challenge, there are plenty of problems in the world amenable to solution via machine learning, especially in today's data deluge. If you want a deep mathematical appreciation of the algorithms and their derivation, you should do CS229, not CS229a.
andrewparker 15y ago
For those who tldr; The author should have taken CS 229, but instead took CS 229a and was disappointed. He then overgeneralizing from his 229a experience about the future of Stanford CS education.
gfodor 15y ago
There are two goals with learning ML: - Applying known ML algorithms to a real world task - Coming up with new ML algorithms and research It turns out (ahem) that the first goal, applying ML, is not only much, much higher in demand than the second goal, but is also much, much easier to teach than the content required to pursue the second. This dichotomy is the reason the split between CS229a and CS229 in both content and audience works so well. The demand for CS229 is low and the rigor is high (so it should be priced high), and the demand for CS229a is high and the rigor is low (so it should be priced low.) The author signed up for the wrong class. I think Stanford is teasing out subfields of CS that have this quality, and there sure are many.
- brudolph 15y ago
  I'm sorry if I made it confusing, but it really isn't about whether I signed up for 229 or 229a, the point is most of my classes for the coming term are now under this new online format and it would be shame to see them lower their standards to fit the public.
  - gfodor 15y ago
    It's a good point -- I guess we'll find out next semester if the difficulty being below average had to do with the nature of the class itself (the a in 229a) or the audience it was being developed for. I hope, if the classes you mention are listed under the same course number they always have, that the difficulty won't be less than usual. For the rest of us, what classes are these? Part of the reason an easier class is better for the public is because there's just less time for working people. If the difficulty/time commitment for the offered classes next semester are substantially more than 229a I'd imagine you'll see a much higher dropout rate not due to lack of ability but due to lack of time. It seems odd Stanford would try to pack a "real" course into the online/public format, but at the same time seems odd they'd dilute a "real" course for their undergraduates.
    - gcb 15y ago
      The easier assignments are easier because they now have morehints alongside. this i guess is not to ease for lazy slobs (what you described :) but to ease the demand for help on the staff. The critic is that they overdid
th0ma5 15y ago
It is my understanding from various threads on Reddit that the AI class was meant also to be something of a talent search, as those in the top percentile got a message saying "send us your cv" or something like that.
jacobquick 15y ago
This kid's a...kid, I guess we shouldn't expect a long view from him. What he sees as a slippery slope is a normal part of education that's hard to spot if you're only in the system for four years. Professors have been complaining for decades that students don't start their classes with the basics already down. Making a video version of this class, even one that only teaches the first half of the real class, means the professors will start to expect the students know that part already and the real class will expand to include even more advanced topics. There's no danger of Stanford or Harvard or MIT or anyone else making things easy on their undergrads.
UK-Al05 15y ago
I haven't taken it; so I don't know what the difference is. However you might have to separate genuine concerns from threat of students elitism being taken away.
lekanwang 15y ago
I was MS CS at Stanford, and I agree with Ben's sentiment. I took CS221, and checked out ai-class for fun, and knew several people taking the on-campus version of CS221 this quarter. The short of it is that the online version is essentially the same as the on-campus version, and both fail to adequately prepare a student for further study in AI. It's great that Norvig and Thrun are willing to present this survey class to the public, but not at the expense of students who are actually in the classroom at Stanford and also footing the bill for this grand experiment. Yes, the class was a fun introduction to AI. But no, it did not offer a deep and thorough theoretical foundation that I would expect from a Stanford class.
16s 15y ago
I signed-up for the crypto class next semester. I'm looking forward to it. I code a bit of crypto and am interested to see what they'll cover. On a separate note, I don't think the full-time Standford students need to be concerned about the free Internet classes. Guys like me (state A&M college degrees) who take online Standford classes won't devalue his Standford degree one bit. Two totally different things as he is enrolled as a degree-seeking Standford student and I (and those like me) are not.
sakura_k 15y ago
It's awesome that Stanford is offering free versions of their classes and adapting the content to the needs of those students. If Stanford is teaching the same classes with the same adaptations to their core CS students, I'd be worried too. Full time on-campus students likely want (and deserve) different adaptations. That's the really concerning thing I saw in the OP's post. Perhaps this class happened to be taught at an easier-than-usual level. But, if professors are torn between the demands of simultaneously serving dedicated (paying or non-paying) students and casual students, the compromises won't always be to the benefit of the dedicated.
phodo 15y ago
I took both, the AI and the ML class, and completed them to the end. All this with a very demanding work schedule at a startup in the valley. I've also been a PM for a large scale ML product that is in production and used by millions of people. I say all this because the courses were perfectly geared to someone like me. I thought the courses were excellent and pragmatic. (of course, like anything, there can be improvements). I think the issue here is what we are witnessing, aside from the awesomeness of open courseware, is the evolution and continued maturity of Computer Science as a discipline, as it takes more and more mathematical concepts into its fold. Machine Learning is growing up as a foundational pattern / algorithm that has evolved from research to applied to basic-building-blocks-everyone-should-know. Yes, it took the Valley and Stanford to liberate it (as a poster indicates somewhere here), but that's ok. There is as much street cred in understanding how to implement/design practical applications using ML as there is in pushing the frontier on new ML mathematical techniques. That's how new commercial innovation takes place. You need both sides of the equation; the research and the practical. The course chose a balance that favored the latter, because prior to this little existed. You can hear it in Prof. Andrew Ng's videos... "this is big in the valley"..."you now know how to implement XYZ"... "if you ask these questions on an ML product, you can save your tea, time and money" (I'm paraphrasing). Recall that at one point, logic/truth tables, sorting algorithms, graphs, etc. all needed to be derived mathematically with their proofs. But then they became axioms and codified as foundational building blocks of CS that just work, enabling us to focus on the next step in the evolution. We don't question or even think twice today when implementing "if (X && Y)".
bgposter 15y ago
I fully understand the author's concerns, but isn't it possible to just make the classes more rigorous for those(at Stanford and online) with a better CS/math background? I mean it was clear that prof. Ng was giving only part of the story, presenting the intuition and skipping the math details/proofs. What is wrong with adding the more rigorous material as optional content for the online learners, and non-optional for the students at Stanford? I am unfortunatelly only able to take these exciting classes online, but would like to see more rigour too. I am willing to pay a modest fee for the privilege.

214 points by brudolph 15y ago

jeffreymcmanus 15y ago

Watch out, this guy is about to write a letter.

absconditus 15y ago
This is not reddit.

acslater00 15y ago

As a stanford CS grad myself, I basically concur. I took this class as a refresher for things I learned back in school. It was perfect for that. But the rigor and difficulty of the class was clearly tailored towards someone like me, who wanted to watch lecture videos over dinner for a few hours a week, rather than a full-time student. I actually wasn't aware that the online class was being offered for credit in the CS department until reading this. It surprises me that they're doing so.

erlis 15y ago
I did the AI class and that was not the case. Stanford students were clearly separated from the online students. We didn't get the same assignments neither.
- dlo 15y ago
  I took CS221 last quarter. So I can say that you got the same assignments and exams; you just weren't required to do the programming assignments. While ml-class was perhaps the third iteration of putting the machine learning class online, ai-class was probably the first time someone tried to put CS221 online; the professors simply felt that they wouldn't be able to automate the assignments in the time that they had. In fact, many of the YouTube lectures, which many Stanford students seemed to prefer, were often not available to us in time for the assignments and exams.

swalsh 15y ago

I think there's a great opportunity to take online classes to the masses without sacrificing the quality of a brick and mortar education. These classes don't need to be offered free, just cheap. If they charged $10 for the whole class (a steal really!) they'd make $1,000,000 a semester per class. That should pay for the bandwidth, and teacher, and material. Scale that to less niche classes, you have a real business! I'd personally pay $10 for a class, even if it did not qualify for credit.

pitt1980 15y ago
I think your math is a little off, 100K signed up for the AI class, only 40K actually turned in a HW, guessing that less than 20K actually finished, guessing none of the classes this spring will have anything close to that enrollment
- restofus 15y ago
  This was an initial experiment so I am pretty sure they will change the format a little bit later. lots of people signed up for all the classes and it was difficult to do all the three at the same time but if given the option of doing it at your own pace I do not think it will go down.
- swalsh 15y ago
  You pay at the beginning. Whether you finish or not does not change how much you make.
  - ShardPhoenix 15y ago
    If you had to pay up-front (even $10), they'd probably have gotten <1000 signups.

tlammens 15y ago

According to the website http://cs229a.stanford.edu/ http://cs229a.stanford.edu/ there are class meetings, according to the blogpost everything is done solitary? Another difference with the course offered to the public is that there is an open ended project. If he really wanted a harder class, why not take CS229 and not CS229A... If you want something to be harder, to get more out of something you should pursue it yourself, not depend on others. I see (online) education as a guide, not as the only source of input. Selfstudy and initiative is the most important thing.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
brudolph 15y ago
Class meetings were optional (which I did attend) and only a fraction of the students actually attended. I don't have a problem with cs229a being easier than 229, but the thing is a lot of other classes have now turned to the online format with no alternative (like 229 to 229a). Selfstudy is great, but sometimes the best way to learn is from a structured class.
- restofus 15y ago
  <i> Selfstudy is great, but sometimes the best way to learn is from a structured class</i> Well lots of people might like to be treated like grown ups and not like the structured classes and who knows they might even write a letter asking for refund
  - overgryphon 15y ago
    I'm surprised you think being in a structured class is equivalent to being treated like a child. What school did you go to that did this?
    - restofus 15y ago
      I do not think structured classes is equivalent to being treated like a child. It was intended as a general comment that some people might not like it and equate it like that based on his comment that only a fraction people actually attended it and maybe if it was made compulsory they might not like it and there is a probability that they will say that. Just a point that what ever you do there will be some group that will not like it .

johnohara 15y ago

Put down the pen. MIT, Stanford, et.al. have already done the math on this. 20,000 "certification" exams @ $99.00 each is not insignificant. It's just shy of 40 full-time students @ $50,000 per year. Heats a lot of buildings.

absconditus 15y ago
Principles be damned, there is money to be made!
- restofus 15y ago
  Really principles be damned, they are doing it for free
- johnohara 15y ago
  I don't mean to imply that schools should be in it for the $$$. I get your point. But costs are an issue. A big issue. And right now student tuitions shoulder a large part of that burden. Stanford's total enrollment is about 20,000 students. $35,000 per year = $700,000,000. Offer 16 new online courses which yields 20,000 students per course taking a $99 final exam. $31,680,000. Less than 5% of annual tuition-based revenue. That's a new library without hitting the endowment fund, underwriting existing salaries, funding pension obligations, or adding a new facility dedicated solely to the production of online educational content. I think Leland and Jane Stanford would be proud to know that the memorial they built to their son is today moving in the direction of educating millions worldwide. It's okay to "be strong and stay strong and while being of benefit to others."
  - absconditus 15y ago
    The problem is providing a questionable education and then selling a meaningless certification to make money. These classes are also highly vulnerable to cheating and you can be sure that a large number of people will take advantage of this to pump up their resumes.
    - 15y ago

pg_bot 15y ago

I have watched a few of the online lectures offered by Stanford and I can't help but notice that the audio and video quality of the lectures is terrible. The video will not track the lecturer, and the audio will randomly cut in and out for long periods of time. (If I remember correctly, one lecture was missing half its audio) Also, I am unsure of the class sizes at Stanford but it seems like no one can arrive on time to a lecture.

tlammens 15y ago
The online lectures you are talking about are the ones on youtube. They are not the same as the ones used in ml-class.org. The latter ones are in a completely different format. It is not just a recording of a "normal" lecture...
- pg_bot 15y ago
  I am talking about the open courseware offered here http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php I am unsure if these are the same videos offered on youtube, however by taking a glance at the website it looks like they are the exact same classes.
  - tlammens 15y ago
    If I understood correctly, those were a predecessor of the current lectures. I had no problems with audio missing. (but yes quality could have been better)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
denzil_correa 15y ago
I am not sure you're on the same page as the author.

Hyena 15y ago

This post needs a comparison with CS229a prior to the online courses. Was the course harder before online classes and then got significantly dumbed down? Or was the course easy enough that it was a good candidate for the project?

brudolph 15y ago
CS229a didn't exist prior to the online courses.
- Hyena 15y ago
  Then it seems like there isn't so much a problem and the course is plausibly performing its intended function. Obviously the course was designed by Stanford to fill some role; unless you think that the course had a design flaw only detectable once it got rolling, then the best assumption would be that your expectations were wrong. Of course, you could certainly have asked, as a Stanford student, what drove the design of the course and how the professor actually felt about the execution. That would have been an interesting follow up.

diiq 15y ago

My degree is in Fine Art, and I thought the class was pointlessly easy. Fix the class in two easy steps: Lecture live, record the lectures. EVERY speaker is more effective when they have the feedback of their audience's faces. Expect the members of the public to meet the class' standard, don't shrivel the curriculum to match the public. An applied CS course that doesn't demand programming is bizarre. Flunk everyone if you have to. Grades should perhaps reflect understanding?

CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
I felt similarly dismayed about a machine learning course which doesn't demand knowledge of calculus.
- restofus 15y ago
  I disagree I do not know calculus and would not have done this class if that was the case. I am now implementing ML in my day to day work . Anybody can make ML difficult , the greatness is in making it easy for people to use it and that makes a real world impact IMHO
  - denzil_correa 15y ago
    and I believe this "Anybody can make ML difficult , the greatness is in making it easy for people to use it" is the real deal.
- balloot 15y ago
  Wow. They didn't require knowledge of calculus? I took the actual CS 229 at Stanford and a class that doesn't require calculus at all would only be able to touch on a small fraction of topics. My worry, which is similar to the worry of the student in the linked post, is that these lectures may be devaluing the in-person versions of the course. CS 229 was one of the top 5 hardest classes I have ever taken. I would rather not someone else take it via a dumbed down online lecture and say "I did that too! It wasn't so bad!"

CurtHagenlocher 15y ago

It's been over twenty years since I finished college. Last year I did a "certificate in quantitative finance" at UW which -- like the Stanford classes -- were both online and seemingly aimed at working professionals. It's interesting to compare these on three fronts: 1) The amount of rigor and work required for the Stanford classes was significantly less than the UW classes. I spent as much as 10 hours per week on the UW homework in addition to the 3-4 hours of video lectures. That's against about an hour for the Stanford homework and another 60-90 minutes for the lectures. I agree with the OP's description of the ML homework as starting out at a decent level of difficulty and quickly becoming trivially easy. 2) I found the format of the Stanford lectures considerably easier to follow. By making a canned recording, there's a huge amount of dead time which can simply be edited out of the lecture. That plus the ability to watch at 1.5x speed meant that I was rarely tempted to do something else at the same time as watching the lecture -- something which frequently caused me trouble with the UW classes. 3) The UW classes were something like $3500/course. If my employer hadn't been willing to reimburse me, I wouldn't have taken them. All-in-all, I think the Stanford classes are great experiments in which I'm happy to participate. I'm planning to take five of them in Jan-Mar.

mikedmiked 15y ago
Were you a quant before you took the UW classes?
- CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
  Nope. My background is in engineering so the calculus wasn't an issue, but my stats knowledge was really weak.
  - reagan83 15y ago
    I'm interested to know if earning that cert from UW allowed you to jump in to the financial sector. I'm currently pursuing a similar path and would be interested to hear about your experiences.

Jun8 15y ago

He says: "Stanford “free” classes aren’t free. Stanford students have to pay for them. The fact that I’m paying for them doesn’t bother me, the fact that people who aren’t paying for them have changed the class more than the ones who have, does." which does seem to be a forceful point. However, checking the FAQ (http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx#aboutq2 http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx#aboutq2) we find that they are funded completely from outside sources. So this guy didn't even bother to do some basic Google checking.

sshrin 15y ago
As far as I know, the Stanford online courses are NOT the same as the ones listed on the SEE page. They seem to be two different initiatives. I know for sure that the ones on the SEE page are recorded video lectures from the actual live classes.
eldina 15y ago
Perhaps some of the funds raised for these open classes could and would have been raised for other projects relating to proper Stanford students ?

clavalle 15y ago

There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes. Example: The 'level 1' or 'core' videos and assignments can be a base and offered for free and be of a similar duration and difficulty as the class now... 'Level 2' would either replace or augment the 'level 1' and would be more advanced and require some knowledge of pre-requisites and more 'synthesis' or 'critical' style assignments and less hand holding. Maybe they could charge for access to this level... 'Level 3 etc' could go deeper into the topic and perhaps offer more mathematical rigor or dive into more advanced topics or expose students to related current research etc. The assignments could also be tougher and more free form. Depending on how much human interaction is needed on the assignments and whatnot, they could justify a much higher price... I would be very interested in a program that had this kind of format. It would allow for exploration without too much commitment but a deep dive on topics that are interesting and perhaps a window into a community of people exploring the same topics... If I were paying Stanford level tuition for the class as it stands now, I'd be a bit disappointed too.

jmilloy 15y ago
> There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes. Of course there is. These classes are provided for free, yet require time and money and effort. You've likely more than tripled the required resources to produce the class.
- politician 15y ago
  There is no reason that the most difficult grades must be open to the public for free. Slap a paywall on it, a "With Student ID" bypass, and call it a day.
- clavalle 15y ago
  I'd be happy to pay, especially for the higher levels. But it would be nice to explore topics at the most shallow level for free or at a low price to see if it covers what I expect in a manner that I find useful. Basically, a funnel.

kenjackson 15y ago

It's unclear to me if this guy didn't learn enough or if it just wasn't hard enough. I do personally think that some courses are hard for the sake of being hard. If he learned the material stated in the syllabus and it was easy, then that's a really great thing and a tribute to the teaching.

DennisP 15y ago
Some courses are hard for the sake of being hard, because they are intended to filter out students who can't hack it. The degree is proof that you had the intelligence and determination to earn it. When you're not awarding a degree anyway, that consideration is irrelevant, and the only requirement is to teach as clearly and effectively as you can.

restofus 15y ago

tldr; The experts make it look impossible but the masters make it look easy and actually teach you Just ranting out here so feel free to ignore :-) This is not really aimed at the author but towards the "elite" group. There was another elite commentator in one of the other thread who said he dropped out of ML class because This course included gems such as "if you don't know what a derivative is, that is fine" and he thought math was important in ML. Before the ML class I could not even argue with these guys because I did not know squat about AI and talking to these experts their advice was to take a year off and learn math and then start learning AI which in my case was not possible. Today after a couple of months of online classes I am actually using ML in my daily work and its not magic that only the elite with deep profound math knowledge can use. Another programmer who is working in khan academy actually had a blog post about how he implemented ML by learning from Prof Andrew's class now that is real world impact. I may be missing something but can one of you experts please explain why you need deep math knowledge when the professor who has been doing a lot of research in this field a lot more than you does not think so ?. The professor in his classes keeps reassuring that even after using it for so many years he has difficulty in the subject but I'm guessing these experts know it all :-). This is the reason in my opinion even though wall street is full of smart people they do not care about the rest of the population or the general masses the attitude is we are smart and we can do what we want you guys are dumb and deserve what you get and if someone outside of their elite group starts talking their language they do not like it. On a similar note when you look at the people complaining about khan academy most of them are these so called smart people. Let me talk about my background I have been working as a programmer for around 11 years , no math background though thought myself math by using Khan academy and before my layoff (now am working on my own startup ) used to make 90K (in a southern state). So guys you are not the center of the world we are crashing into your fraternity you are no longer the only experts who can talk about ML , the guys at stanford are smarter than you and know what they are doing and FYI they don't need you its the other way around. Another interesting thing is that mostly the current students seem to agree with the author, If you are smart you should probably take the effort to learn more rather than asking them to tailor the classes to what you think matters . Also ask yourself this question if you were the Professor what do you think is more satisfying teaching 40 full time students or 20000 who are in the field already and make more impact in the field ?.

chl 15y ago

My impression was that the course was designed to give someone with little or no background in machine learning a maximally useful amount of practically relevant information given a multitude of constraints (ergo the focus on Andrew Ng's favourite implementation tricks of the trade, learning curves &c.; each of dozens of such nuggets having the potential to save days, weeks or even months in real projects). If that was indeed the goal, the endeavour should, in my opinion, be considered an amazing success. An easy way to make the assignments harder (and maybe more fulfilling), if you have the time, might be to ignore much of the handholding (e.g. by porting everything to a very different programming environment). Ideally, online courses like that would be "infinite" and personalized, giving everyone as much depth (and breadth!) as desired (with a "baseline" approximately equal to the 2011 class) and taking existing knowledge into account. Eventually, we'll all get our Primer!

juanre 15y ago

I took the AI class, and I also saw a degradation of the difficulty. At the beginning it was great. I even undusted my old 48SX, and had lots of fun: they actually made me think. But some of the lessons towards the end were almost a joke: I sure don't need to spend time applying a trivial formula back and forth, as we did in the computer vision lessons (deriving it would have been a slightly more interesting exercise.) I don't know if Stanford students were paying for this, but I'd not be very happy if I had. On the other hand, I am very happy that they are doing it, and I intend to take as many as my time will allow. And I wish they'll figure out a way to charge a small fee for having "Stanford" in the title in some manner, so that they don't have to spend about half of the certificate of accomplishment making sure that everybody understands that this is _not_ an actual Stanford certificate.

laibert 15y ago

I'm not sure I understand how opening up classes to the online world would would affect the coursework of Stanford students. If the author felt that CS229a was not rigorous enough, he should have just taken CS229 whose problem sets could double as full-time jobs. Morever, a good chunk of stanford CS classes are already offered online through SCPD (the professional development system) and as far as I know, the structure of those classes remain unchanged.

denzil_correa 15y ago

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -- Leonardo Da Vinci

jmares 15y ago

I took CS229 at Stanford. ml-class.org does a phenomenal job in equipping you with the practical knowledge needed to apply the tools of machine learning to real problems. There is no reason why learning to use these tools should be hard. If you want a challenge, there are plenty of problems in the world amenable to solution via machine learning, especially in today's data deluge. If you want a deep mathematical appreciation of the algorithms and their derivation, you should do CS229, not CS229a.

andrewparker 15y ago

For those who tldr; The author should have taken CS 229, but instead took CS 229a and was disappointed. He then overgeneralizing from his 229a experience about the future of Stanford CS education.

gfodor 15y ago

There are two goals with learning ML: - Applying known ML algorithms to a real world task - Coming up with new ML algorithms and research It turns out (ahem) that the first goal, applying ML, is not only much, much higher in demand than the second goal, but is also much, much easier to teach than the content required to pursue the second. This dichotomy is the reason the split between CS229a and CS229 in both content and audience works so well. The demand for CS229 is low and the rigor is high (so it should be priced high), and the demand for CS229a is high and the rigor is low (so it should be priced low.) The author signed up for the wrong class. I think Stanford is teasing out subfields of CS that have this quality, and there sure are many.

brudolph 15y ago
I'm sorry if I made it confusing, but it really isn't about whether I signed up for 229 or 229a, the point is most of my classes for the coming term are now under this new online format and it would be shame to see them lower their standards to fit the public.
- gfodor 15y ago
  It's a good point -- I guess we'll find out next semester if the difficulty being below average had to do with the nature of the class itself (the a in 229a) or the audience it was being developed for. I hope, if the classes you mention are listed under the same course number they always have, that the difficulty won't be less than usual. For the rest of us, what classes are these? Part of the reason an easier class is better for the public is because there's just less time for working people. If the difficulty/time commitment for the offered classes next semester are substantially more than 229a I'd imagine you'll see a much higher dropout rate not due to lack of ability but due to lack of time. It seems odd Stanford would try to pack a "real" course into the online/public format, but at the same time seems odd they'd dilute a "real" course for their undergraduates.
  - gcb 15y ago
    The easier assignments are easier because they now have morehints alongside. this i guess is not to ease for lazy slobs (what you described :) but to ease the demand for help on the staff. The critic is that they overdid

th0ma5 15y ago

It is my understanding from various threads on Reddit that the AI class was meant also to be something of a talent search, as those in the top percentile got a message saying "send us your cv" or something like that.

jacobquick 15y ago

This kid's a...kid, I guess we shouldn't expect a long view from him. What he sees as a slippery slope is a normal part of education that's hard to spot if you're only in the system for four years. Professors have been complaining for decades that students don't start their classes with the basics already down. Making a video version of this class, even one that only teaches the first half of the real class, means the professors will start to expect the students know that part already and the real class will expand to include even more advanced topics. There's no danger of Stanford or Harvard or MIT or anyone else making things easy on their undergrads.

UK-Al05 15y ago

I haven't taken it; so I don't know what the difference is. However you might have to separate genuine concerns from threat of students elitism being taken away.

lekanwang 15y ago

I was MS CS at Stanford, and I agree with Ben's sentiment. I took CS221, and checked out ai-class for fun, and knew several people taking the on-campus version of CS221 this quarter. The short of it is that the online version is essentially the same as the on-campus version, and both fail to adequately prepare a student for further study in AI. It's great that Norvig and Thrun are willing to present this survey class to the public, but not at the expense of students who are actually in the classroom at Stanford and also footing the bill for this grand experiment. Yes, the class was a fun introduction to AI. But no, it did not offer a deep and thorough theoretical foundation that I would expect from a Stanford class.

16s 15y ago

I signed-up for the crypto class next semester. I'm looking forward to it. I code a bit of crypto and am interested to see what they'll cover. On a separate note, I don't think the full-time Standford students need to be concerned about the free Internet classes. Guys like me (state A&M college degrees) who take online Standford classes won't devalue his Standford degree one bit. Two totally different things as he is enrolled as a degree-seeking Standford student and I (and those like me) are not.

sakura_k 15y ago

It's awesome that Stanford is offering free versions of their classes and adapting the content to the needs of those students. If Stanford is teaching the same classes with the same adaptations to their core CS students, I'd be worried too. Full time on-campus students likely want (and deserve) different adaptations. That's the really concerning thing I saw in the OP's post. Perhaps this class happened to be taught at an easier-than-usual level. But, if professors are torn between the demands of simultaneously serving dedicated (paying or non-paying) students and casual students, the compromises won't always be to the benefit of the dedicated.

phodo 15y ago

I took both, the AI and the ML class, and completed them to the end. All this with a very demanding work schedule at a startup in the valley. I've also been a PM for a large scale ML product that is in production and used by millions of people. I say all this because the courses were perfectly geared to someone like me. I thought the courses were excellent and pragmatic. (of course, like anything, there can be improvements). I think the issue here is what we are witnessing, aside from the awesomeness of open courseware, is the evolution and continued maturity of Computer Science as a discipline, as it takes more and more mathematical concepts into its fold. Machine Learning is growing up as a foundational pattern / algorithm that has evolved from research to applied to basic-building-blocks-everyone-should-know. Yes, it took the Valley and Stanford to liberate it (as a poster indicates somewhere here), but that's ok. There is as much street cred in understanding how to implement/design practical applications using ML as there is in pushing the frontier on new ML mathematical techniques. That's how new commercial innovation takes place. You need both sides of the equation; the research and the practical. The course chose a balance that favored the latter, because prior to this little existed. You can hear it in Prof. Andrew Ng's videos... "this is big in the valley"..."you now know how to implement XYZ"... "if you ask these questions on an ML product, you can save your tea, time and money" (I'm paraphrasing). Recall that at one point, logic/truth tables, sorting algorithms, graphs, etc. all needed to be derived mathematically with their proofs. But then they became axioms and codified as foundational building blocks of CS that just work, enabling us to focus on the next step in the evolution. We don't question or even think twice today when implementing "if (X && Y)".

bgposter 15y ago

I fully understand the author's concerns, but isn't it possible to just make the classes more rigorous for those(at Stanford and online) with a better CS/math background? I mean it was clear that prof. Ng was giving only part of the story, presenting the intuition and skipping the math details/proofs. What is wrong with adding the more rigorous material as optional content for the online learners, and non-optional for the students at Stanford? I am unfortunatelly only able to take these exciting classes online, but would like to see more rigour too. I am willing to pay a modest fee for the privilege.