Coursera free course on data analysis starts today

[ComteZero]

Computing for data analysis post on R bloggers



and



ze course itself

[pj]

Done it already.

Big Smile

Worth every second.

Go for it.

The guy is a R-real enthusiast.

[apine]

couple of others that i've found, too:



code school has free R tutorial. as i'm neither done nor an expert in R, i can say only that i'm learning and it is very cool how it is interactive. so far, i like it and it is one of the few online resources that takes advantage of actually being a computer vs just displaying text.



i'm in the midst (but behind) on the coursera course for intro to computational finance. can try to add more on that after i make more progress.



also, caltech starts a machine learning course ("learning from data") taught by Abu-Mustafa tomorrow. am going to try for that. might be ahead of my current math skills.

[segaa]

pj>Done it already.

pj, does this course contain any material on how to work with big data sets in R (in the magnitude of terabytes)? Thanks.

[pj]

No, it's an introductory course.



And by design R needs to keep all its stuff

in a RAM.



That being said, there do are the ways to

make R work with big data.

But, no, they were not covered.

[polysena]

ComteZero you seem to have gone through it.



Followed the link but did not quite fully figure out how it works.. what does it mean starts now?



Does it mean that if you register, you will follow the lectures and exercise sessions (perhaps in differed if you are not in the same time zone) but more or less in synchronization with the "physical" students and that you are supposed to hand out the homework sort of at the same time as "physical" students?



 If you do not register means you cannot see the "lectures"?



thx Poly

[etuka2]

The course started last week.  If you don't register for the courses, you won't see the material.  Coursera courses are time sensitive, so if you don't hand in the homeowrk in time, you don't get credit, but it will probably get marked, whatever that is worth to you.  I don't think there are any physical students, but I could be wrong.  Everyone on the course will be operating to the same schedule.

[pj]

Nah, it's your humble servant

who has don that.

Basically you can register

any time and download everything.

Another thing, you usually have

soft and hard deadlines (depends on the

professor). And I didn't do one of the six,

and finished well out of 70%.

So either you register, and

download the stuff or you register and

finish it (I would recommend that).

Or I can send you the pdf lectures

(the videos are a tad big)

[Peerless]

On the "about us" page: "We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities(...)"

Does social entrepreneurship imply making money (eventually for a living)? Because I don't see how they do that since it's free... (I already checked the intro of the wiki page, didn't find the answer)



Course seems pretty basic though: I think someone with some experience in programming could learn R in, say, 2 days.



Never heard of coursera before, it's worth some digging ... Thanks

[pj]

> Because I don't see how they do that since it's free...



It's a cool start-up (remember 1998?), so it doesn't think about the monetisation yet.



Its concurrent www.udacity.com is backed by the non-evil empire (AKA Google).



There is also Edx (backed up by MIT and Harvard).



And after it is up and running properly,

it might not need much money afterwards.



The content providers (AKA teachers)

do it for free since it's hip. And to run a

course for, say, 10000 guys should be

quite interesting.