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Comment by mtrn | Hacker News Reader

Took the AI class and it was just amazing. I never had a professor more passionate (yet still rational :) about a subject.

Even though the course made the math and the background sound simple, it wasn't. There is a probably thin line between breaking-down things into a set of well-partitioned and easy to understand statements and oversimplifying really complex systems.

Also, the applications (edge detectors, robotic cars, particle filter based localizations, ...) kept me very motivated throughout the course.

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Totally agreed. Prof. Thrun and Prof. Norvig made math an interesting part of the course. At the end of the course I found myself more motivated to learn mathematics than ever before.

Yes, and on a related note: Today morning I skimmed the preface to Computational Science and Engineering by Gilbert Strang, and he also states, that (at least some) math should be thought alongside applications and algorithms, which, since these used to be intense topics, have been traditionally separated by academic curricula.

AI class was a perfect example of that interleaved approach, I think.

having taken all three classes (AI, DB, ML), I have to point out that in my opinion (and that of other people I spoke with) ai-class was _by far_ the worsely organized, passion of the teachers notwithstanding.

But I am sure Know Labs learned a lot from it and they can only improve.

The website itself sucked, the quizzes weren't very usable, but the videos themselves were wonderful — in my opinion the best. And I wouldn't be surprised if that was the part that's hardest to improve on, and also the most important one.

I think some of the frustration may be due to Thrun and Norvig style of asking questions he has not yet fully explained and requiring mental leaps.

This seems uncomfortable at first and getting things wrong is hard to bear in the short term.

On the flipside a better and more long lasting understanding is gained from working things out rather than just learning facts.

If they had waited till it was perfect perhaps it would never have happened, teach early, teach often.

Which one is the best?

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