How to Win at Texas Hold ‘Em: A Free MIT Course

in Games, MIT, Online Courses | August 23rd, 2017

In 2015, we fea­tured a short MIT course called Pok­er The­o­ry and Ana­lyt­ics, which intro­duced stu­dents to pok­er strat­e­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, and deci­sion-mak­ing in eleven lec­tures. Now comes a new course, this one more square­ly focused on Texas Hold ‘Em. Taught by MIT grad stu­dent Will Ma, the course “cov­ers the pok­er con­cepts, math con­cepts, and gen­er­al con­cepts need­ed to play the game of Texas Hold’em on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el.” Here’s a quick overview of the top­ics the course delves into in the 7 lec­tures above (or find them here on YouTube).

  • Pok­er Con­cepts: pre­flop ranges, 3‑betting, con­tin­u­a­tion bet­ting, check-rais­ing, float­ing, bet siz­ing, implied odds, polar­iza­tion, ICM the­o­ry, data min­ing in pok­er
  • Math Con­cepts: prob­a­bil­i­ty and expec­ta­tion, vari­ance and the Law of Large Num­bers, Nash Equi­lib­ri­um
  • Gen­er­al Con­cepts: deci­sions vs. results, exploita­tive play vs. bal­anced play, risk man­age­ment

You can find the syl­labus, lec­ture slides and assign­ments on this MIT web­site.  How to Win at Texas Hold ‘Em will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT’s Intro­duc­tion to Pok­er The­o­ry: A Free Online Course

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Learn Python with a Free Online Course from MIT

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Harvard Course on Positive Psychology: Watch 30 Lectures from the University’s Extremely Popular Course

in Harvard, Online Courses, Psychology | August 15th, 2017

Sev­er­al years back Tal Ben-Sha­har taught a course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy at Har­vard, which became, at least for a while, the most pop­u­lar course at the uni­ver­si­ty. About the course NPR wrote: “Twice a week, some 900 stu­dents attend Tal Ben-Sha­har’s class on what he calls ‘how to get hap­py.’ … His class offers research from the rel­a­tive­ly new field of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy, which focus­es on what makes peo­ple hap­py, rather than just their patholo­gies.”

Avail­able in an admit­ted­ly grainy for­mat, you can watch the 30 lec­tures from that course above, or over on YouTube. Accord­ing to the orig­i­nal syl­labus, top­ics dis­cussed include “hap­pi­ness, self-esteem, empa­thy, friend­ship, love, achieve­ment, cre­ativ­i­ty, music, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and humor.”

If you’re inter­est­ed in delv­ing deep­er into Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy, we’d rec­om­mend Tal Ben-Sha­har’s books: Hap­pi­er: Learn the Secrets to Dai­ly Joy and Last­ing Ful­fill­ment and Short Cuts to Hap­pi­ness: Life-Chang­ing Lessons from My Bar­ber. The same goes for read­ing the works of Mar­tin Selig­man, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia pro­fes­sor who effec­tive­ly invent­ed the field. You can also take free cours­es on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy. Just head over to our col­lec­tion of Free Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

All You Need is Love: The Keys to Hap­pi­ness Revealed by a 75-Year Har­vard Study

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New Deep Learning Courses Released on Coursera, with Hope of Teaching Millions the Basics of Artificial Intelligence

in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Online Courses | August 9th, 2017

FYI: If you fol­low edtech, you know the name Andrew Ng. He’s the Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor, who co-found­ed MOOC-provider Cours­era and lat­er became chief sci­en­tist at Baidu. Since leav­ing Baidu, he’s been work­ing on three arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence projects, the first of which he unveiled yes­ter­day. On Medi­um, he wrote:

I have been work­ing on three new AI projects, and am thrilled to announce the first one: deeplearning.ai, a project ded­i­cat­ed to dis­sem­i­nat­ing AI knowl­edge, is launch­ing a new sequence of Deep Learn­ing cours­es on Cours­era. These cours­es will help you mas­ter Deep Learn­ing, apply it effec­tive­ly, and build a career in AI.

Speak­ing to the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review, Ng elab­o­rat­ed: “The thing that real­ly excites me today is build­ing a new AI-pow­ered soci­ety… I don’t think any one com­pa­ny could do all the work that needs to be done, so I think the only way to get there is if we teach mil­lions of peo­ple to use these AI tools so they can go and invent the things that no large com­pa­ny, or com­pa­ny I could build, could do.”

Andrew’s new 5‑part series of cours­es on Deep Learn­ing can be accessed here. Cours­es include: Neur­al Net­works and Deep Learn­ing, Improv­ing Deep Neur­al Net­works, Struc­tur­ing Machine Learn­ing Projects, Con­vo­lu­tion­al Neur­al Net­works, and Sequence Mod­els.

You can find these cours­es on our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es Free Course on Deep Learn­ing: The Sci­ence of Teach­ing Com­put­ers How to Teach Them­selves

Google’s Deep­Mind AI Teach­es Itself to Walk, and the Results Are Kooky, No Wait, Chill­ing

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

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Google Launches Free Course on Deep Learning: The Science of Teaching Computers How to Teach Themselves

in Computer Science, Google, Online Courses | July 28th, 2017

Last Fri­day, we men­tioned how Google’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence soft­ware Deep­Mind has the abil­i­ty to teach itself many things. It can teach itself how to walk, jump and run. Even take pro­fes­sion­al pic­tures. Or defeat the world’s best play­er of the Chi­nese strat­e­gy game, Go. The sci­ence of teach­ing com­put­ers how to do things is called Deep Learn­ing. And you can now immerse your­self in this world by tak­ing a free, 3‑month course on Deep Learn­ing itself. Offered through Udac­i­ty, the course is taught by Vin­cent Van­houcke, the tech­ni­cal lead in Google’s Brain team. You can learn more about the course via Van­houck­e’s blog post. Or just enroll here. (You will need to cre­ate an account with Udac­i­ty to get start­ed.)

The free course takes about 3 months to com­plete. It will be added to our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ences cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion,  1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google’s Deep­Mind AI Teach­es Itself to Walk, and the Results Are Kooky, No Wait, Chill­ing

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

 

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Herbie Hancock to Teach His First Online Course on Jazz

in Music, Online Courses | June 23rd, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Mas­ter­Class is on fire these days. In recent months, the new online course provider has announced the devel­op­ment of online cours­es taught by lead­ing fig­ures in their fields. And cer­tain­ly some names you’ll rec­og­nize: Dr. Jane Goodall on the Envi­ron­ment, David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing, Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy, Aaron Sorkin on Screen­writ­ing, Gor­don Ram­say on Cook­ing, Christi­na Aguil­era on Singing, and Wern­er Her­zog on Film­mak­ing. Now add this to the list: Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz.

Writes Mas­ter­Class:

Her­bie Hancock’s jazz career start­ed in his family’s liv­ing room, lis­ten­ing to his favorite records and try­ing to play along. Now, he’s one of the most cel­e­brat­ed musi­cians in the world. Join Her­bie at the piano as he shares his approach to impro­vi­sa­tion, com­po­si­tion, and har­mo­ny.

The course won’t get start­ed until this fall, but you can pre-enroll now. Priced at $90, the course will fea­ture:

  • 20+ video lessons where Her­bie teach­es you how to “impro­vise, com­pose, and devel­op your own sound.”
  • 10+ orig­i­nal piano tran­scrip­tions, includ­ing 5 exclu­sive solo per­for­mances.
  • A down­load­able class work­book.
  • And the chance to have the 14-time Gram­my win­ner cri­tique your work.

Appar­ent­ly this will be the first time Han­cock has ever taught a course online.

Learn more about Her­bie Han­cock Teach­es Jazz here. And find more Mas­ter­Class cours­es here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

What Miles Davis Taught Her­bie Han­cock: In Music, as in Life, There Are No Mis­takes, Just Chances to Impro­vise 

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

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Take Free Philosophy Courses from The Institute of Art and Ideas: From “The Meaning of Life” to “Heidegger Meets Van Gogh”

in Online Courses, Philosophy | June 14th, 2017

Back in 2014, we told you about how The Insti­tute of Art and Ideas (IAI) launched IAI Acad­e­my — an online edu­ca­tion­al plat­form that fea­tures free cours­es from world-lead­ing schol­ars “on the ideas that mat­ter.” They have since put online a num­ber of phi­los­o­phy cours­es, many striv­ing to address ques­tions that affect our lives today. We’ve list­ed a num­ber of them below, and added them to our list of 150+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy cours­es. For a com­plete list of IAI Acad­e­my cours­es, vis­it this page.

  • Hei­deg­ger Meets Van Gogh: Art, Free­dom and Tech­nol­o­gy — Web video — Simon Glendin­ning, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics
  • Dark Mat­ter of the Mind — Web video — Daniel Everett, Bent­ley Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Fear and Trem­bling in the 21st Cen­tu­ry — Web video — Clare Carlisle, King’s Col­lege Lon­don
  • Knowl­edge and Ratio­nal­i­ty — Web Video — Corine Besson, Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex
  • Life, Mean­ing and Moral­i­ty — Web video — Christo­pher Hamil­ton, King’s Col­lege, Lon­don
  • Minds, Moral­i­ty and Agency — Web video — Mark Row­lands, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
  • On Roman­tic Love — Web video — Berit Bro­gaard, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
  • The Human Com­pass — Web video — Janne Teller
  • The Mean­ing of Life — Web video — Steve Fuller, Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick
  • The Uni­verse As We Find It — Web video — John Heil, Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St Louis
  • Unveil­ing Real­i­ty — Web video — Bryan Roberts, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics
  • Why the World Does Not Exist — Web video — Markus Gabriel, Freiburg Insti­tute of Advanced Study.

Note: The cours­es are all free. How­ev­er, to take a course you will need to cre­ate a user account.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

The Great War and Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

Søren Kierkegaard: A Free Online Course on the “Father of Exis­ten­tial­ism”

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Introduction to Python, Data Science & Computational Thinking: Free Online Courses from MIT

in Computer Science, MIT, Online Courses | June 12th, 2017

FYI: MIT has post­ed online the video lec­tures for an essen­tial series of cours­es. In the playlist of 38 lec­tures above, you can get an Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming in Python. Record­ed this past fall, and taught by Prof. Eric Grim­son, Prof. John Gut­tag, and Dr. Ana Bell, the course is “intend­ed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. It aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems and to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals. The class uses the Python 3.5 pro­gram­ming lan­guage.” Find accom­pa­ny­ing course mate­ri­als, includ­ing syl­labus, here.

The fol­low up course, Intro­duc­tion to Com­pu­ta­tion­al Think­ing and Data Sci­ence, is again intend­ed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. “It aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems and to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals. The class uses the Python 3.5 pro­gram­ming lan­guage.” Find relat­ed course mate­ri­als here, and the 15 lec­tures on this playlist.

Both cours­es will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Learn How to Code for Free: A DIY Guide for Learn­ing HTML, Python, Javascript & More

Down­load 243 Free eBooks on Design, Data, Soft­ware, Web Devel­op­ment & Busi­ness from O’Reilly Media

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Dr. Jane Goodall Will Teach an Online Course About Conserving Our Environment

in Environment, Nature, Online Courses | June 5th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

A quick heads up: The great pri­ma­tol­o­gist and anthro­pol­o­gist Dr. Jane Goodall–now 83 years old–will soon teach her first online course ever. Host­ed by Mas­ter­class, the course, con­sist­ing of 25 video lec­tures, will teach stu­dents how they can con­serve the envi­ron­ment. It will also share Goodal­l’s research on the behav­ioral pat­terns of chim­panzees and what they taught her about con­ser­va­tion. The course won’t get start­ed until this fall, but you can pre-enroll now. The cost is $90.

Oth­er cours­es cur­rent­ly offered by Mas­ter­class include:

Find more cours­es taught by star instruc­tors here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.