Interactive course about “everyday” data science | Hacker News Reader

Interactive course about “everyday” data science

tigyog.app

153 pointsandrewnc52 comments

Last year, I wrote the book Everyday Data Science. It was #1 on HN! [1]

This year, I've been working with Jim Fisher on a new kind of interactive course. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure, except you'll learn Thompson sampling, differential equations, and Bayesian-optimal pricing.

After several months, the first two chapters are ready! Every word, button, and sound has been painstakingly crafted. Try out the first chapter to see what we mean! [2]

The course will be $99, but it’s $29 today, as a thanks for helping us build the next 8 chapters! Let us know what you think :-)

- Andrew Carr [3]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253281 [2]: https://tigyog.app/d/L:X07z8laLyz/r/when-life-gives-you-lemo... [3]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr

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This is not intended as a criticism and, as an experienced data scientist, I'm probably not the target audience anyway. But just... how this hits me. There is a LOT of visual "decoration" and sales-y, pitchy stuff here that makes my eyes/brain glaze over from too much emotional stimulation. Maybe it has the opposite effect for others.

Hi! What are the main things you'd remove? E.g. maybe we've gone too heavy with the illustrations, or sounds?

Just want to put my two cents in and say I love the format. I think it definitely appeals more to younger folks with all the emojis and cartoonish styles (like myself, early twenties).

But the interactive prompts are great. They really get you to engage with the content. The humorous tone strikes a good balance and doesn’t get distracting as well.

I’ll probably buy the course once more chapters are released.

Thanks, such positive comments give me strength to continue! (I recognize though that I may have gone overboard with silly styles in some places ...)

The next chapter should be out next month - stay tuned! (Which reminds me, we should probably have a "subscribe for updates" button, without having to buy it first ...)

...everything from the emojis on up? I think it's just not my vibe. But I'm sure you've done it this way because it works for a lot of other people.

It sure as hell doesn't work on me. The kind of glib emoji-packed sales-slash-emotional priming spiel totally rubs me the wrong way.

Everything here screams "we're sales people first, content people second" and that's not worth my time. I'll choose quiet confidence over showmanship.

no, your feeling is valid, you speak for the rest of us who are so turned off we dont even bother to tell him

I've been a long time fan of your content! Thanks all for these criticisms, we'll definitely take them to heart.

Everyday Data Science is the first course on TigYog [1], a platform I'm building. Most courses are video-based, but TigYog courses are more like books. The only addition is multiple-choice buttons with responses. This lets you simulate the tight feedback loop you’d have with a private tutor.

Andrew's writing shows off what you can make with this medium. It's a bit like blogging. Try it out and let me know how it goes! (Currently it’s a WYSIWYG editor, though I’m also working on a Markdown+git interface. Let me know if you’re interested.)

- Jim Fisher [2]

P.S.: Thanks to one user reporting an Apple Pay UI glitch. I'm on it! In the meantime, ordinary Stripe card payment should work.

[1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/

> [1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/

I like your style!

First chapter was quite fun. I actually would have bought the course, but do not own a credit card. This is quite common outside of the US, if you could add PayPal it would be substantially more accessible.

Thanks! :-) That's a great point, I'll look at adding PayPal. (In the meantime, anyone in this situation: send me an email and I'll can sort something out for you! - jameshfisher@gmail.com)

When places say "credit card", they really mean credit card or debit card. Either works.

No, debit cards in most of the world do not function for remote transactions, even if they have a Mastercard or visa logo. My bank's cards for instance are Mastercard's "Maestro" product which is in-person and debit only, and has alternative infrastructure for online payments.

Which parts of the world are these? I’ve used debit cards issued by various European and US banks for online payments all over the world since the ‘90s.

What part of the world is "most of" it in this case? Where I live, Maestro and the like are considered children's cards for the reasons you mention, and real debit cards work just fine for online transactions.

meta question:

Expecting this post is an "A/B Testing"

Q: Which group am I actually in now? Is this group "A" or "B" ?

:-)

Haha!! Excellent question. So this is our fourth round of testing messages. We didn't want to A/B on HN cause that kinda feels disingenuous! But we've definitely been crunching things like conversion rates.

(Edit: this comment is a stupid meta-meta-joke, please ignore :-)

Was “Excellent” or “Great” group A?

Exit: oh… that was the joke. I thought I was clever

Yes, one of those was group A

Ha!! Great question, so this is our fourth round of message testing. We didn't want to A/B directly on HN cause that feels kinda disingenuous, but we've definitely been crunching conversion rates and such.

I just spent half an hour in an airport reading the first chapter. With only a bit of knowledge of Bernoulli distributions, I found it very informative and well written, moving forward at a nice pace. The tiny tests made me reread a few things I had glossed over initially, forcing me to understand it a little better. Good job.

It would be cool if you provided links to further reading on the various concepts, for extracurricular studies.

Overall the style and ethos feels similar to Pluto.jl, which I think puts you in good company :)

Bonus points for working almost flawlessly on mobile (the table with 0’s and 1’s overflowed and was pushed offscreen.)

Thank you! I thought "I've never heard of Pluto.jl", but then realized I've seen it a lot in that course by Grant Sanderson! At some point TigYog will have interactivity like that :)

Good spot on the table. I'll edit the example to fit, and make math blocks scroll more nicely if they overflow.

I actually bought your book on Amazon and the book I received was insanely disappointing. Full of typo’s, super wonky formatting, super short in depth and content, and the paper book was the lowest quality of any I’ve ever received from Amazon.

I didn’t leave a review because There weren’t many and I didn’t want to sour your sales with a 1-star, but I now kind of regret that.

The course looks cool, but it honestly just feels like a monetizing attempt on something that really didn’t deserve much money to begin with.

Thanks for the feedback, I was hoping the course would be something of a redemption.

I self published the book to prove I could do something like that. It got much more traction than I had planned and, in hindsight, I wish I had paid for editing and formatting as a minimum.

As for the quality of the paperback, that was unfortunately out of my control as I used Amazon's print on demand services. Definitely a painful lesson for me.

In any case, I appreciate this comment and others here. I'm definitely working towards much higher substance with increased polish. :)

Hi! I wonder whether we could win you back with the course? We've reworked so much of the content, I hope you'd find those problems are gone! (Although the course is not on higher quality paper)

To be honest I’m just bot willing to spend money on another product of yours.

This especially if it’s a rehash of the same material (which maybe you missed in my previous comment, but I didn’t find to be high-quality).

Considering the OP’s complaint pointed to a lack of effort and polish, this response doesn’t really build trust in the product.

No real opinion but fwiw

>(Although the course is not on higher quality paper)

Is a joke, because this course isn't a book at all.

I didn't want to make an empty comment, but simply - thanks!

Interesting course. I'm not sure if you're affiliated with tigyog.app owners or not, but 20% commission on paid courses is too much. The platform looks neat and interesting, but I wouldn't pay 20% of whatever I'm charging for a course to be able to use a platform that self describes as a "blog with buttons".

Hi! I'm the solo developer of TigYog.app. I've been working with Andrew to build out the course. What percentage would you consider appropriate? It's set at 20% essentially because I have rent and bills to pay :-)

(not the person you're responding to) If you're offering free, perpetual hosting, I think it's worth 20% of sales for the creator (who doesn't know if they're even going to sell much, or if the material will become outdated and stop selling in a few years)

I wondered how the creator of this course could guarantee the course would be available forever, and what a headache it must be to continue to maintain the hosting/content if sales taper off. Outsourcing that job to a service which is hosting many such courses (and with new ones continually added) makes a lot more sense here, and of course you have bills to pay too. That 20% commission isn't just covering the cost of time you put into the course builder and hosting now, it covers hosting in perpetuity.

I get that, and I wish you the best with it. It's definitely interesting like I said. I'm not sure what financial model would make it seem less intimidating, but I'd imagine as a indie course-maker-on-the-side it'd be too expensive. Maybe a different pricing scheme for corporations.

I'd assume 20% covers payment processing fees, collecting VAT/etc where appropriate, and so on.

As a comparison, Leanpub charges 20% for books/courses (not sure if those courses are on par with the features offered by tigyog). You'd get better pricing with Gumroad, but no interactive features on that platform. 20% is more than fair in my opinion.

I feel the same way. I believe 20% is very reasonable if it drives traffic. So it's a chicken and egg problem. Right now, due to it not having much courses there, the value isn't there.

Side note on nav UX. I expect a right click on logo to be able to open up the tigyog landing page, not save image dialog.

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