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Actually, Thrun's AI course, Ng's ML course, and Widom's Databases course were announced and ran pretty much simultaneously. They were all successful, but only

Actually, Thrun's AI course, Ng's ML course, and Widom's Databases course were announced and ran pretty much simultaneously. They were all successful, but only Thrun decided to split off because of it.

melling 10y ago
I noticed that Andrew's course is still available. https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning Is it still a good introduction to machine learning? It's several years old now. Are there better courses available?
- ktta 10y ago
  That course is a very good basic machine learning course. It has many of the stepping stones to complex machine learning problems, no matter which specific field. So yes, it is a good intro to machine learning. There are new advances coming up all the time. But you will definitely need to know most of the topics in that course. That is, if you want to properly understand most of the latest techniques.
  - visarga 10y ago
    It also works great psychologically - concretely, Andrew is capable of inspiring enthusiasm and confidence.
    - mwambua 10y ago
      I see what you did there. :) Someone even made a drinking game out of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/mlclass/comments/lvxuz/mlclass_drinking_game_drink_every_time_professor/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mlclass/comments/lvxuz/mlclass_drin...
- nl 10y ago
  It's a good course. The only(?) real criticism of it is the reliance on Matlab/Octave.
  - yomly 10y ago
    And even then, I can see why they use it - the syntax is pretty light and largely gets out of the way of the problem-space. The only problem is that modern applied ML is dominated by Python...
    - malandrew 10y ago
      I'm curious why there hasn't been a push towards more efficient compiled languages like golang? I don't work with machine learning and AI, but I used to do a lot of server-side programming with dynamic language. Switching to golang has been great. I'm far more productive with it and the CPU and memory savings have been great. Isn't ML the kind of domain where CPU cycles and memory matter?
      - p1esk 10y ago
        Because of GPUs.

melling 10y ago

I noticed that Andrew's course is still available. https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning Is it still a good introduction to machine learning? It's several years old now. Are there better courses available?

ktta 10y ago
That course is a very good basic machine learning course. It has many of the stepping stones to complex machine learning problems, no matter which specific field. So yes, it is a good intro to machine learning. There are new advances coming up all the time. But you will definitely need to know most of the topics in that course. That is, if you want to properly understand most of the latest techniques.
- visarga 10y ago
  It also works great psychologically - concretely, Andrew is capable of inspiring enthusiasm and confidence.
  - mwambua 10y ago
    I see what you did there. :) Someone even made a drinking game out of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/mlclass/comments/lvxuz/mlclass_drinking_game_drink_every_time_professor/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mlclass/comments/lvxuz/mlclass_drin...
nl 10y ago
It's a good course. The only(?) real criticism of it is the reliance on Matlab/Octave.
- yomly 10y ago
  And even then, I can see why they use it - the syntax is pretty light and largely gets out of the way of the problem-space. The only problem is that modern applied ML is dominated by Python...
  - malandrew 10y ago
    I'm curious why there hasn't been a push towards more efficient compiled languages like golang? I don't work with machine learning and AI, but I used to do a lot of server-side programming with dynamic language. Switching to golang has been great. I'm far more productive with it and the CPU and memory savings have been great. Isn't ML the kind of domain where CPU cycles and memory matter?
    - p1esk 10y ago
      Because of GPUs.