Udacity aims to teach 160,000 students statistics | Hacker News Reader

Udacity aims to teach 160,000 students statistics

significancemagazine.org

49 pointsrayvega20 comments

Whoever wrote the article should take the course. Lots of numbers are wrong. The plot was wrong -- MIT would take over 2000 years to reach 160,000 students with the intro stats course, not 40. Of course, it's actually a bit less than that -- most MIT students take some course that includes stats. One name per second is over a day, not 4 hours and 27 minutes. Etc.

I tried to post a correction, but it's 'awaiting moderation'. Traditional technique for scammy magazines for avoiding negative comments.

This is just an introductory course (as stated in the original article) that I'm signed up for, more to see what it's like than to learn the material (after 5 years of econometrics and 3 years of statistics I'd like to think I knew this stuff). Not the only course I've signed up for (Logic and Discrete maths etc.) but the only one where they got in touch asking us to push it to others - they're obviously trying to break some sort of record with this one. Which I hope they manage. Given how much regular university education costs I'm hoping this catches on before any of my kids want to go.

Has anyone done codecademy before or any other free online programming course and how does this Udactiy compares to those? What would you suggest for a total beginner, start off with Udacity? Or together with other courses to replace each other's weaknesses?

Is Udacity specialize for teaching programming? Or like MitX where they are just free online education providers?

I got into some of the basic codecademy javascript class, and did enjoy it, and also complete CS101 and CS253 in Udacity. That's in Python, so the comparison may not work all that well, but with the videos, homeworks, and forums, I learned a whole lot more from Udacity. As a beginner, I would recommend CS101. Right now Udacity is mostly programming, but in the article they mention a few new classes starting up soon in Math and Physics. Eventually they hope to branch out further and teach everything.

Start with Udacity, it's university-grade material thought by college professors and/or highly experienced professionals while Codecademy (at the moment) is more like an interactive tutorial that walk you through how to do simple, practical stuff like building an html work, how to use CSSs etc.

You can benefit from both, depending on what you want to build and at what stage of your project you are in.

I would start with Udacity, but be advised it's going to be no cakewalk.

I have no deep experience with MitX (nor Coursera) though I checked them out briefly and they seem to provide insane quality considering they come with no price tags.

I'm taking CS101 (Python) from Udacity now. Loving it: such a nifty little system they have of getting this information across.

Is the Stats class going to be just basic stats? or are they going to show programming methods for stats?

You can find out more about it on the course's webpage: http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/st101/CourseRev/1

The video says that they will have an optional track for programming with statistics.

40 or 50 thousand (at the very best) will end up actually taking the course though...

Still, impressive.

If the attrition rate is anything like the crypto course from coursera then around 3-4000 of those will end up finishing the course and achieving a pass.

Which I would argue is still impressive...

I'm not familiar with the courses in question, but my impression is that basic statistics is much easier than basic crypto. Obviously, either one could be made arbitrarily difficult, but I've seen more people struggle with things like RSA than with T-tests and distributions.

Also, I think statistics knowledge is more relevant, especially to everyday life, than crypto. Not to say that crypto is unimportant, but statistics is applicable everywhere and changes how you view pretty much everything.

So I think there are some reasons for the stats course to have less attrition than crypto.

It would be interesting to see the attrition of other similar classes at both Udacity and Coursera.

That would be an interesting comparison, but I'm not sure what it would show. Comparative difficulty of course material? How good the platforms are? The required student time investment? Perceived rewards? All of these probably contribute in some way

It certainly is a wide new world of possibilities, especially for those of us who want to continue semi-structured learning outside of a university environment.

Given that nearly 20,000 students completed ai-class, I think the number for this course will be much bigger than 3-4000.

The success in this courses cannot be measured only by those that achieve a pass or certification. I did one of Udacity's courses, but being short on available time I didn't do all the homework or the final exam. I still learned a lot...

A single lecture of the most simple and most significant equation everybody should know:

youtu.be/umFnrvcS6AQ

The rest is distraction in the current "economy".

> youtu.be/umFnrvcS6AQ

Or, you could just watch "The Trouble with Tribbles"

So it's a bunch of video lectures covering material combined with exercises you can do to check your own reasoning?

Congratulations, you've invented the textbook. In video form! Don't get me wrong, a textbook is a nice useful resource, but it's not some kind of "revolution in higher education". The option has always been there to learn stats 101 from the book.

I would say it is more a refinement of the classroom than a re-invention of the textbook.

Most of the classes have an overall project that motivate students to see the way through the end and all of these courses have consistency with the design of the other offered courses. Together with the forum and passionate, all-star teachers I would say this is the closest we have come to the future shape of education.

Textbooks given away for free (with or without video, or interactive question banks) would actually be a "revolution in higher education". But that's more a statement about how backward higher education is than anything else.

It's not just the materials (book or video) but a community of students working through it together.

Have also signed up.

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