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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

This could be risky for Stanford. What happens when all the online students ace the class (demonstrating the curve was very easy), or get consistently better grades than the students enrolled at Stanford?

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Chalk it up to self-selection bias, then optionally recruit them. Not a problem.

Personally, I would love to be recruited by Stanford to study CS. I have a Master's of Science in Financial Engineering, but I have always felt that I probably should have picked up a more solid CS background on my way to that degree. Also, it would be nice to meet some people face-to-face that have an interest in launching a start-up in the risk management arena. There is simply no interest for anything like that in the Cleveland area.

EDIT: I work in an interest rate risk management group for a major US bank. I can attest that there is definitely more room for good software in this space.

Or rather, a good problem to have.

This is a possibility, but if it does happen, I don't think it would reflect anything other than very determined people took the class that very possibly could have officially enrolled if they applied.

this is also a very introductory course. i think it's great for whetting the appetite for further research into particular areas, but it definitely glosses over a lot of the mathematical foundations that a course like CS 229 (mentioned elsewhere) thoroughly explores. as such, i'm not sure if there's much a top grade in this course would even signify beyond some amount of commitment and interest in artificial intelligence.

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