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Learn time series with a story illustrated by Stable Diffusion
We just published this tutorial about ARMA(p,q) models for modeling time series, and how to fit them using Python. But while it’s a tutorial, it has a few twists. First, it’s interactive: you’ll learn by solving problems and making choices. Second, it’s a story: you play a character in a plot that gives you real-life problems to solve. And third, it’s illustrated: we spent many hours hacking with Stable Diffusion, GIMP, and matplotlib.
This is chapter 3 in our interactive course, Everyday Data Science. [1] The first half of the chapter is free. You can get the whole course forever for $29. These chapters are a lot of effort to produce, so please let us know what you think :-)
- Andrew Carr [2] and Jim Fisher [3]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118530
[2]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr
[3]: https://jameshfisher.com/ https://jameshfisher.com/
- sophie_l 4y agoNice storytelling, and I love the images!
- mikejulietbravo 4y agoThis is really cool! We'd love to help you turn this into a Lightning App if you'd be interested
- mikejulietbravo 4y agoLightning App = Hosted version of this with a full UI attached.
- redhal 4y agoI find it a little shady to wait for people to get to half the course before requiring to buy it.
- zorgmonkey 4y agoIt is effectively a free trial of the course, which seems fine as long as it is disclosed upfront that the rest of the content is paid. Edit: after actually using the site I see your point, the only indicator is the small text "free preview" which I probably wouldn't have noticed without first having read the Show HN post.
- jamesfisher 4y agoHi! Do you think there's any way we can make it clearer what's going on? I put "free preview" at the top, but perhaps it can be easily missed.
- merlincorey 4y agoI also didn't notice the "Free Preview" on the progress bar until reading about it in this thread. As distasteful as it may be, an actual heading or otherwise strongly formatted text note near the top should suffice for most people.
- StrictDabbler 4y agoIt looks like you cut the preview from 46% of this chapter to just 22% of the chapter... I went back to look for a quote from about 41% of the way through to explain to another commenter why the style is so effective and ran into the paywall earlier than I had my first time through. Just FYI, the content before 22% isn't strong enough to sell the preview. It has to get to the questions where you're asking for intuitive guesses on the real mathematical expressions to make it clear how valuable this is. Honestly, you should just be giving away this whole chapter. If you did then I could forward it to colleagues, let them learn this one concept and suggest they get the rest of the info. As it is I really can't do that. It'd be like giving a friend a flyer that was shoved under my door.
- jamesfisher 4y agoHey, thanks for the feedback (and your kind words!). I've moved the paywall back to (roughly) where it was. It's a challenge to find the right balance between showing off the content, but also leaving enough to encourage people to buy the course! All ideas appreciated for tweaks and alternative payment models :)
- sliken 4y agoIndeed, especially at an eye popping $30 an hour or so for content.
- jamesfisher 4y agoHi, it's actually $29 for the entire course, of which this post is just one chapter. Was there some content that suggested it was $29 for just this chapter? I need to fix that if so!
- sliken 4y agoAh, that's a surprise. It went from 0 to 46% then it popped a "buy me" dialog, I had assumed it was $29 the 47-100%. I only took 10-20 minutes and seemed pretty pricey for another 10-20 minutes. Maybe add a "$29 for this course/N chapters" or "$29 for a course and show the syllabus".
- jamesfisher 4y agoThanks for the reply! I can see now that it's not super clear. I might assume the same thing at first sight. I'll see what I can do to clarify it.
- StrictDabbler 4y agoI find myself irritated by how effective this method of instruction is. I'm not sure which is more annoying: -going through years of education in pure mathematics without this kind of tutorial -not having come up with this method myself, when it's so close to the dumbed-down edutainment software of the 90's Every university course should start with at least a day of instruction written in this style. [kicks dirt]
- garren 4y agoA product that takes a similar approach is: “A Curious Moon” @ BigMachine [0] It’s not an intro to time series or data analysis, but it’s a great intro to Postgres, db administration, and etl that follows a fun and compelling storyline. The presentation is different, but the “edutainment” style is similar. [0] https://bigmachine.io/products/a-curious-moon/ https://bigmachine.io/products/a-curious-moon/
- werzum 4y agoI love this type of education - do you know where I can find more content like that? I really have trouble finding stuff like this just by Googling; rather, I seem to stumble over it from time to time.
- sliken 4y agoHeh, indeed, the similarly effective method if gamification. Even relatively "dry" things like algebra can be gamified, Dragonbox is a good example. From my limited experience (1 kid), it works really well.
- eutectic 4y agoNot to be rude, but I found it a bit infantilizing. I would rather just have the information.
- StrictDabbler 4y agoThat's fair in a sense but it also looks like they moved the preview paywall much earlier in the chapter, 22% instead of 46%. Towards the middle of the chapter they start asking intuitive questions about how coefficients in the power-series map to the real-life concepts they've been discussing "childishly" up until then. It's a major turning point and I wonder if you just didn't get the opportunity to see that shift. It's infantilizing right up until it isn't.
- iandanforth 4y agoHow did you get Stable Diffusion to write 'congo.com' on multiple boxes correctly? I have to assume there was gimp editing and then blending?
- jamesfisher 4y agoYeah, I used the perspective tool in GIMP for that. That was the main bit of "editing in post". I was saying earlier, it would be cool if there was an ML tool for adding/modifying text in images. Similar to how there are additional tools for fixing faces, super resolution, and so on.
- fudged71 4y agoVery cool. Are these interactive stories created with Twine?
- jamesfisher 4y agoThanks! It's actually created with TigYog [1], a platform I'm building to let people write these kinds of interactive stories/lessons. It's somewhat influenced by things like Twine, but: * It emphasizes "mostly-linear narrative" rather than "exploring rooms in an open world" * It emphasizes using interactive fiction for education (e.g. features for "correct answer") * It emphasizes writing over programming (e.g., no explicit variables) * It has a WYSIWYG editor that feels kinda like blogging Let me know how it goes if you try it out! [1]: https://tigyog.app/ https://tigyog.app/
- Gatsky 4y agoPerhaps we’re finally getting a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.