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That's not the entire explanation for Ng's use of Octave though. At the birth of Coursera in 2012, R and Python were already clearly established in the field o
by xenocyon 6y ago
That's not the entire explanation for Ng's use of Octave though.
At the birth of Coursera in 2012, R and Python were already clearly established in the field of data science. R was the dominant open-source language for data science, with Python very close behind (and already gaining ascendancy among folks who identified with "machine learning" rather than "data science"). I remember Matlab/Octave being more associated with academics/students in EE (signal processing, wireless communications, and the like); if you want clear insight into matrix operations, Octave is great.
I think Ng made a very conscious decision at the time to eschew built-in functions and not get distracted by trendy languages - hence the use of Octave to learn how to implement algorithms at the most basic linear-algebra level.
Even at the time his decision was not well understood nor popular - way back then I remember people asking "Why Octave instead of R or Python?"
- gmiller123456 6y agoI think his choice of Octave was really just to avoid using Matlab. I had taken several other courses around the same time, and they all used Matlab. All of the courses had arranged for a free Matlab license for the time the course was active. You also were given the option of buying the Student version for $99. That didn't last long, I haven't seen any courses offering a free license (or even using Matlab for that matter), and to get the Student license you have to be enrolled at a 4 year institution. In those classes that did use Matlab, there were quite a few people sticking to Octave, though it wasn't 100% compatable. And when I got to Ng's course, I (and I imagine a whole lot of others) were really happy to see he went 100% with Octave. Had he gone the Matlab route, the old course would be pretty worthless now. We'll never know what happened behind closed doors, but I think Matlab was sponsoring some courses in order to get new people hooked on Matlab and it just didn't pay off.
- alisonkisk 6y agoWhy would they be worthless? Octave is Matlab clone.
- gmiller123456 6y agoThat's certainly the goal, but in the courses I took, the Octave users always had Octave specific issues they had to work through, so there were some incompatibilities. This was about 10 years ago, so I imagine Octave has made some progress in that area too.
- cstejerean 6y agoI've taken 3 MATLAB courses on Coursera this year and they've all included free student access to MATLAB online. Also, a home use license for MATLAB is available for $149.