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Over the past few years, I've watched a few courses on Udacity, Coursera and EdX. I prefer taking ad-hoc courses to fill knowledge gaps (statistics, AI, program

Over the past few years, I've watched a few courses on Udacity, Coursera and EdX. I prefer taking ad-hoc courses to fill knowledge gaps (statistics, AI, programming, math, etc.), so I can't give a full review of the complete Nanodegrees, Certificates, XSeries, etc. I usually watch the lessons as needed without completing the entire course; mixing and matching MOOC courses with video learning sites (e.g. Datacamp, Youtube channels, Khan Academy, Egghead, etc.) If I had to pick a MOOC platform, I prefer Udacity's more hands-on approach, but enjoy courses on EdX and Coursera. The quality of all three MOOC platforms is excellent. It's an amazing time for autodidacts! If you're starting from scratch, without any background knowledge, the certificate programs with access to mentors are a great place to start. The curriculum is designed by industry professionals and/or experienced professors. This saves you time, keeps you focused and offers a place to get help when needed.

jitix 9y ago
Do you have any recommendations on statistics for beginners?
- neovive 9y ago
  Udacity has two free introductory statistics courses that they recommend prior to starting their AI nanodegree program: Intro to Descriptive Statistics [https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-descriptive-statistics--ud827 https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-descriptive-statisti...] Intro to Inferential Statistics [https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-inferential-statistics--ud201 https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-inferential-statisti...] Khan Academy also has very in-depth coverage of statistics, starting from the basics. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability
- ycombinator_usr 9y ago
  if you want to focus on Statistical Learning, I can recommend Introduction to Statistical Learning Using R[1] by Prof. Hastie and Tibshirani. [1]: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesSciences/StatLearning/Winter2016/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesSciences/Sta...
  - harry8 9y ago
    I found the lectures entertaining and the exercises of a much lower quality. Not enough of them, shallow and ambiguously worded. I got something like 90% on the edx MITx probability course and was barely getting 50% for the above mentioned Stanford stat learning course for the 5 weeks of it I completed. I mention the MIT course, (which I highly recommend fwiw) only to support my view that I don't think my experience is aptitude or workload related. But as ever YMMV.
- bbarn 9y ago
  Not a MOOC, but I loved this: http://www.statsoft.com/Textbook/Basic-Statistics/button/1 http://www.statsoft.com/Textbook/Basic-Statistics/button/1

jitix 9y ago

Do you have any recommendations on statistics for beginners?

neovive 9y ago
Udacity has two free introductory statistics courses that they recommend prior to starting their AI nanodegree program: Intro to Descriptive Statistics [https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-descriptive-statistics--ud827 https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-descriptive-statisti...] Intro to Inferential Statistics [https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-inferential-statistics--ud201 https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-inferential-statisti...] Khan Academy also has very in-depth coverage of statistics, starting from the basics. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability
ycombinator_usr 9y ago
if you want to focus on Statistical Learning, I can recommend Introduction to Statistical Learning Using R[1] by Prof. Hastie and Tibshirani. [1]: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesSciences/StatLearning/Winter2016/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesSciences/Sta...
- harry8 9y ago
  I found the lectures entertaining and the exercises of a much lower quality. Not enough of them, shallow and ambiguously worded. I got something like 90% on the edx MITx probability course and was barely getting 50% for the above mentioned Stanford stat learning course for the 5 weeks of it I completed. I mention the MIT course, (which I highly recommend fwiw) only to support my view that I don't think my experience is aptitude or workload related. But as ever YMMV.
bbarn 9y ago
Not a MOOC, but I loved this: http://www.statsoft.com/Textbook/Basic-Statistics/button/1 http://www.statsoft.com/Textbook/Basic-Statistics/button/1