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I agree with the OP's point in general, but disagree with you on the game theory course. This was the first course I've ever completed on Coursera and I think i

by tansey 14y ago

I agree with the OP's point in general, but disagree with you on the game theory course. This was the first course I've ever completed on Coursera and I think it's precisely because the time requirement is very low. They don't have any projects or essays or special software like other classes. It's an hour of video (30 min at 2x) and 5-10 multiple choice questions per week. The whole thing honestly requires 90 minutes of your time. Contrast that with Daphne Koller's PGM class, which I also started taking a while ago but stopped. You had to install Octave and learn to use it, you had really time-intensive programming assignments, you had to answer a bunch of assignment questions, and you had 10 multiple choice problem set questions every week. That class simply required too much work.

hmsimha 14y ago
I didn't take the Game Theory course but that strikes me as quite easy by coursera standards. Perhaps you're downplaying the difficulty of the videos and multiple choice questions? An hour of video on coursera can take me 3 hours to complete if it's very complex material with many engagement checkpoints (where the video is paused and the student is required to answer a question on the material just presented)
- jyu 14y ago
  It was pretty easy, and exactly how tansey describes. The hardest part was that listening to lectures alone was not sufficient to do the homeworks. You needed outside resources that gave better and fuller explanations of the concepts. I think it was around 1-3 hours of work a week, compared to Algorithms which could easily take up 10 hours.
- tansey 14y ago
  I am a machine learning researcher working on game theory problems, so I suppose it's possible. I've never actually had any classes in game theory, so I took the Coursera one to have a firmer background on the subject. I actually learned a ton about things I wasn't aware of, but the mathematics were all very very basic. If you can solve a linear equation (e.g. 2 equations and 2 unknowns), you can ace this class. Many (most?) of the videos did not even have any checkpoints. The class was only 7 weeks so there was not much of an endurance challenge either. It was also really well taught and I learned a lot without needing to pause and rewind, making 2x a breeze. They give a lot of concrete examples and walk through everything multiple times.
mcintyre1994 14y ago
Sure, but it had exams as well. I'm in university studying Computer Science, and started it when I had a bit of extra time. When my work load built up on proper assessed work I needed to do, and I got deadlines that clashed with its exams, I couldn't see the point in watching the videos in a fixed time and then not doing the exam. I'm sure it's valid to criticise my time efficiency while I've been at university, but I did try to phrase my comment without saying the game theory course required too much. It didn't, but it didn't fit with my schedule.
- tansey 14y ago
  Right, I totally understand that. It is surprisingly difficult to find 2 hours a week, consistently every week, to sit down and work on one of these courses. I am just saying that the game theory course is by far the most accommodating of all the Coursera courses thus far. Even the exam, it was 10 questions that honestly only covered the easier parts of the material (e.g., dominated strategies and mixed equilibrium, but nothing to do with the core or shapley values), and they gave you like 10 days to complete it. I think the main takeaway here is that even though this class was really optimized for completion, you still found yourself too busy. This is probably because the course is on the same schedule as your university classes. If they shifted the calendar a few weeks, so that it was mostly during the summer and winter breaks, they would probably see a lot more completions.

by tansey 14y ago

hmsimha 14y ago

I didn't take the Game Theory course but that strikes me as quite easy by coursera standards. Perhaps you're downplaying the difficulty of the videos and multiple choice questions? An hour of video on coursera can take me 3 hours to complete if it's very complex material with many engagement checkpoints (where the video is paused and the student is required to answer a question on the material just presented)

jyu 14y ago
It was pretty easy, and exactly how tansey describes. The hardest part was that listening to lectures alone was not sufficient to do the homeworks. You needed outside resources that gave better and fuller explanations of the concepts. I think it was around 1-3 hours of work a week, compared to Algorithms which could easily take up 10 hours.
tansey 14y ago
I am a machine learning researcher working on game theory problems, so I suppose it's possible. I've never actually had any classes in game theory, so I took the Coursera one to have a firmer background on the subject. I actually learned a ton about things I wasn't aware of, but the mathematics were all very very basic. If you can solve a linear equation (e.g. 2 equations and 2 unknowns), you can ace this class. Many (most?) of the videos did not even have any checkpoints. The class was only 7 weeks so there was not much of an endurance challenge either. It was also really well taught and I learned a lot without needing to pause and rewind, making 2x a breeze. They give a lot of concrete examples and walk through everything multiple times.

mcintyre1994 14y ago

Sure, but it had exams as well. I'm in university studying Computer Science, and started it when I had a bit of extra time. When my work load built up on proper assessed work I needed to do, and I got deadlines that clashed with its exams, I couldn't see the point in watching the videos in a fixed time and then not doing the exam. I'm sure it's valid to criticise my time efficiency while I've been at university, but I did try to phrase my comment without saying the game theory course required too much. It didn't, but it didn't fit with my schedule.

tansey 14y ago
Right, I totally understand that. It is surprisingly difficult to find 2 hours a week, consistently every week, to sit down and work on one of these courses. I am just saying that the game theory course is by far the most accommodating of all the Coursera courses thus far. Even the exam, it was 10 questions that honestly only covered the easier parts of the material (e.g., dominated strategies and mixed equilibrium, but nothing to do with the core or shapley values), and they gave you like 10 days to complete it. I think the main takeaway here is that even though this class was really optimized for completion, you still found yourself too busy. This is probably because the course is on the same schedule as your university classes. If they shifted the calendar a few weeks, so that it was mostly during the summer and winter breaks, they would probably see a lot more completions.