One of the main reasons why I started this blog a few days ago instead of a few months ago is because I spent the majority of my spare time taking 2 Coursera courses from June to September: Introduction to Data Science and Machine Learning.
For anyone who is curious, Coursera is a company that offers massive open online courses for free. Honestly, I think that online courses are similar to courses offered at any university such that the experience in a particular course can vary greatly depending on the professor and topic.
I just finished watching the summary/thank you lecture from Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning course, and what he said really hit me hard:
And before wrapping up, there’s just one last thing I wanted to say. Which is that: It was maybe not so long ago, that I was a student myself. And even today, you know, I still try to take different courses when I have time to try to learn new things. And so I know how time-consuming it is to learn this stuff. I know that you’re probably a busy person with many, many other things going on in your life. And so the fact that you still found the time or took the time to watch these videos and, you know, many of these videos just went on for hours, right? And the fact many of you took the time to go through the review questions and that many of you took the time to work through the programming exercises. And these were long and complicate programming exercises. I wanted to say thank you for that. And I know that many of you have worked hard on this class and that many of you have put a lot of time into this class, that many of you have put a lot of yourselves into this class. So I hope that you also got a lot of out this class. And I wanted to say: Thank you very much for having been a student in this class.
It’s really easy to not follow through with a free online course. Unlike a student trying to take a class for a degree, there’s no GPA boost, no letter of recommendation (although I’d fanboy like crazy if I were to get a letter of rec from Andrew Ng), no real “consequence” of just being lazy/busy and dropping the class. Moreover, it’s hard to see the rewards of a course: free online courses have more emphasis on the main reward (aside from the certificate) coming from the work/effort placed onto the class and the knowledge gained from it.
I’m starting to realize how much time I spent on this course, from watching lecture videos to doing review problems to solving the programming exercises. When I thought I was ahead of the class, the next Monday would come with another set of lectures, problems, and exercises. If I wasn’t out with friends, I would basically be on Coursera taking notes or finishing some assignment.
However, now that it’s almost over and I think back on what I’ve learned in the Machine Learning course, I am extremely thankful for taking the Machine Learning course on Coursera. I completely understand why Andrew Ng is such a renowned professor: his lectures, review questions, and assignments are one of the most informative and clear among any professor I’ve ever taken period. I learned so much in this course about machine learning, from neural networks to collaborative filtering (both of which I look forward to applying in the future). Although the Machine Learning course may involve a lot of work and time, I know that I got a lot out of this class and that I can say without a doubt that it’s worth it.
If you’re interested here’s the link to the Machine Learning course: https://www.coursera.org/course/ml
Aside: After taking this course and reading what Andrew Ng has done, he is definitely on my list of people I aspire to become more like. I wonder if there will ever be a day that I can talk to him for advice and tell him thanks for spending countless hours to create such an amazing course…
