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Octave is a free (GPL) MATLAB alternative. Andrew Ng's introductory Machine Learning Coursera uses Octave to teach programming a simple Neural Net that recogni

by deepnet 10y ago

Octave is a free (GPL) MATLAB alternative. Andrew Ng's introductory Machine Learning Coursera uses Octave to teach programming a simple Neural Net that recognises handwritten digits (MNIST).

tacos 10y ago
The course also uses Matlab. Perhaps we can avoid the Octave vs Matlab debacle by linking to this previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10232595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10232595 Consensus (I'll use the term loosely) was that you get what you pay for. Either spend the bucks on Matlab or preferably use Python. I'll dare to provide a stronger opinion: Octave just sucks and is one of those unfortunate GNU tools that forever seems stuck 15 years in the past. Many people moved to Python, we're all eyeing Julia, the rest of us are largely stuck in Matlab.
- deepnet 10y ago
  I really liked Octave and used it for a lot of prototyping - it was certainly sufficient for my needs and the maintainers are helpful & friendly and were unofficial TA's during the 1st run of Professor Ng's Coursera course. Given the range of finances of a MOOC class of 160,000, Octave's price (free) was vital for some to participate. Matlab looks really cool, but I feel it unfair to advocate un-Free software if my students can't take it home. I never got a chance to play with Matlab so can't really comment. As you suggest I graduated from Octave to Python, sometimes Lua & Torch7 and then the subsets of C for CUDA & OPENCL's GPU parallelism. Javascript is so universal accessible a platform that I like to give demonstrations using Karpathy's ConvnetJS & ReinforceJS as everyone can explore it straight away using the browser console as REPL. Professor Ng's MOOC students managed a good fundraiser for Octave development so those that could, paid something.
  - tacos 10y ago
    If exploring neural nets in a REPL is the spark that finally lights a fire under Octave, I'm all for it! But I think they already lost the battle to Python. > Matlab looks really cool, but I feel it unfair to advocate un-Free software if my students can't take it home. Why is it your job to advocate anything? Inform them of what's available. Challenge yourself to make your lessons applicable to a broader range of tools, including ones your students might craft themselves. Let them know they can get the job done with GIMP but there's Photoshop at $9.99/month that might save them time and make them more employable. $1999 MacBook, $649 phone, but somehow $99 for a critical piece of software is unacceptable. And people wonder why students have debt but can't find jobs.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

by deepnet 10y ago

Octave is a free (GPL) MATLAB alternative. Andrew Ng's introductory Machine Learning Coursera uses Octave to teach programming a simple Neural Net that recognises handwritten digits (MNIST).

tacos 10y ago

The course also uses Matlab. Perhaps we can avoid the Octave vs Matlab debacle by linking to this previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10232595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10232595 Consensus (I'll use the term loosely) was that you get what you pay for. Either spend the bucks on Matlab or preferably use Python. I'll dare to provide a stronger opinion: Octave just sucks and is one of those unfortunate GNU tools that forever seems stuck 15 years in the past. Many people moved to Python, we're all eyeing Julia, the rest of us are largely stuck in Matlab.

deepnet 10y ago
I really liked Octave and used it for a lot of prototyping - it was certainly sufficient for my needs and the maintainers are helpful & friendly and were unofficial TA's during the 1st run of Professor Ng's Coursera course. Given the range of finances of a MOOC class of 160,000, Octave's price (free) was vital for some to participate. Matlab looks really cool, but I feel it unfair to advocate un-Free software if my students can't take it home. I never got a chance to play with Matlab so can't really comment. As you suggest I graduated from Octave to Python, sometimes Lua & Torch7 and then the subsets of C for CUDA & OPENCL's GPU parallelism. Javascript is so universal accessible a platform that I like to give demonstrations using Karpathy's ConvnetJS & ReinforceJS as everyone can explore it straight away using the browser console as REPL. Professor Ng's MOOC students managed a good fundraiser for Octave development so those that could, paid something.
- tacos 10y ago
  If exploring neural nets in a REPL is the spark that finally lights a fire under Octave, I'm all for it! But I think they already lost the battle to Python. > Matlab looks really cool, but I feel it unfair to advocate un-Free software if my students can't take it home. Why is it your job to advocate anything? Inform them of what's available. Challenge yourself to make your lessons applicable to a broader range of tools, including ones your students might craft themselves. Let them know they can get the job done with GIMP but there's Photoshop at $9.99/month that might save them time and make them more employable. $1999 MacBook, $649 phone, but somehow $99 for a critical piece of software is unacceptable. And people wonder why students have debt but can't find jobs.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]