Artificial Intelligence: A Free Online Course from MIT

in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, MIT, Online Courses | May 29th, 2017

Today we’re adding MIT’s course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. That’s because, to para­phrase Ama­zon’s Jeff Bezos, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is “not just in the first inning of a long base­ball game, but at the stage where the very first bat­ter comes up.” Look around, and you will find AI everywhere–in self dri­ving cars, Siri on your phone, online cus­tomer sup­port, movie rec­om­men­da­tions on Net­flix, fraud detec­tion for your cred­it cards, etc. To be sure, there’s more to come.

Fea­tur­ing 30 lec­tures, MIT’s course “intro­duces stu­dents to the basic knowl­edge rep­re­sen­ta­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, and learn­ing meth­ods of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” It includes inter­ac­tive demon­stra­tions designed to “help stu­dents gain intu­ition about how arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence meth­ods work under a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances.” And, by the end of the course, stu­dents should be able “to devel­op intel­li­gent sys­tems by assem­bling solu­tions to con­crete com­pu­ta­tion­al prob­lems; under­stand the role of knowl­edge rep­re­sen­ta­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, and learn­ing in intel­li­gent-sys­tem engi­neer­ing; and appre­ci­ate the role of prob­lem solv­ing, vision, and lan­guage in under­stand­ing human intel­li­gence from a com­pu­ta­tion­al per­spec­tive.”

Taught by Prof. Patrick Hen­ry Win­ston, the lec­tures can all be viewed above. Or watch them on YouTube and iTunes. Relat­ed course mate­ri­als (includ­ing a syl­labus) can be found on this MIT web­site. The text­book, avail­able on Ama­zon, was writ­ten by Pro­fes­sor Win­ston.

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:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

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Learn Python with a Free Online Course from MIT

in Online Courses, Software | May 18th, 2017

The pro­gram­ming lan­guage Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python (true sto­ry!), and now cours­es that teach Python are in very high demand. Last Decem­ber, we fea­tured a free Python course cre­at­ed by Google. Today, it’s a free Python course from MIT.

Designed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence, the course “aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems. It also aims to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, to feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals.” Beyond offer­ing a primer on Python, the course offers an intro­duc­tion to com­put­er sci­ence itself.

The 38 lec­tures above were pre­sent­ed by MIT’s John Gut­tag. On this MIT web­site, you can find relat­ed course mate­ri­als, includ­ing a syl­labus and soft­ware. And if you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing this course as a MOOC (Mas­sive Open Online Course), you can sign up for the ver­sion that begins on May 27th over at edx.

The course will be added to 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:

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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“Calling Bullshit”: Watch Lectures for the College Course Designed to Combat the BS in our Information Age

in Current Affairs, Online Courses | May 15th, 2017

This past Jan­u­ary, we high­light­ed a syl­labus for a ten­ta­tive course called “Call­ing Bull­shit,” designed by two pro­fes­sors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West.

The course–also some­times called “Call­ing Bull­shit in the Age of Big Data”–ended up being offered this spring. And now you can see how it unfold­ed in the class­room. The 10 video lec­tures from the class are avail­able online. Watch them above, or at this YouTube playlist. Also find them housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Accord­ing to The Seat­tle Times, the course “achieved the aca­d­e­m­ic ver­sion of a chart-top­ping pop sin­gle: At the UW [Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton], it reached its 160-stu­dent capac­i­ty short­ly after reg­is­tra­tion opened this spring.” And now col­leges “in Cana­da, France, Por­tu­gal, Eng­land and Aus­tralia have con­tact­ed the pro­fes­sors about teach­ing a ver­sion of the course this fall.”

The course itself was premised on this basic idea: “Bull­shit is every­where, and we’ve had enough. We want to teach peo­ple to detect and defuse bull­shit wher­ev­er it may arise.”

A longer overview of the course appears below. It was cit­ed in our orig­i­nal post. And it’s worth high­light­ing again:

The world is awash in bull­shit. Politi­cians are uncon­strained by facts. Sci­ence is con­duct­ed by press release. High­er edu­ca­tion rewards bull­shit over ana­lyt­ic thought. Start­up cul­ture ele­vates bull­shit to high art. Adver­tis­ers wink con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly and invite us to join them in see­ing through all the bull­shit — and take advan­tage of our low­ered guard to bom­bard us with bull­shit of the sec­ond order. The major­i­ty of admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ty, whether in pri­vate busi­ness or the pub­lic sphere, seems to be lit­tle more than a sophis­ti­cat­ed exer­cise in the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al reassem­bly of bull­shit.

We’re sick of it. It’s time to do some­thing, and as edu­ca­tors, one con­struc­tive thing we know how to do is to teach peo­ple. So, the aim of this course is to help stu­dents nav­i­gate the bull­shit-rich mod­ern envi­ron­ment by iden­ti­fy­ing bull­shit, see­ing through it, and com­bat­ing it with effec­tive analy­sis and argu­ment.

What do we mean, exact­ly, by the term bull­shit? As a first approx­i­ma­tion, bull­shit is lan­guage, sta­tis­ti­cal fig­ures, data graph­ics, and oth­er forms of pre­sen­ta­tion intend­ed to per­suade by impress­ing and over­whelm­ing a read­er or lis­ten­er, with a bla­tant dis­re­gard for truth and log­i­cal coher­ence.

While bull­shit may reach its apogee in the polit­i­cal domain, this is not a course on polit­i­cal bull­shit. Instead, we will focus on bull­shit that comes clad in the trap­pings of schol­ar­ly dis­course. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such high­brow non­sense has come couched in big words and fan­cy rhetoric, but more and more we see it pre­sent­ed instead in the guise of big data and fan­cy algo­rithms — and these quan­ti­ta­tive, sta­tis­ti­cal, and com­pu­ta­tion­al forms of bull­shit are those that we will be address­ing in the present course….

Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think crit­i­cal­ly about the data and mod­els that con­sti­tute evi­dence in the social and nat­ur­al sci­ences.

If you’re inter­est­ed in watch­ing the course, get start­ed with Lec­ture 1: Intro­duc­tion to Bull­shit.

To learn more about the course, please vis­it this web­site.

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:

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Primer by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt

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A Free Course on Machine Learning & Data Science from Caltech

in Computer Science, Data, Online Courses | May 12th, 2017

Right now, Machine Learn­ing and Data Sci­ence are two hot top­ics, the sub­ject of many cours­es being offered at uni­ver­si­ties today. Above, you can watch a playlist of 18 lec­tures from a course called Learn­ing From Data: A Machine Learn­ing Course, taught by Cal­tech’s Feyn­man Prize-win­ning pro­fes­sor Yas­er Abu-Mostafa. The course is sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:

This is an intro­duc­to­ry course in machine learn­ing (ML) that cov­ers the basic the­o­ry, algo­rithms, and appli­ca­tions. ML is a key tech­nol­o­gy in Big Data, and in many finan­cial, med­ical, com­mer­cial, and sci­en­tif­ic appli­ca­tions. It enables com­pu­ta­tion­al sys­tems to adap­tive­ly improve their per­for­mance with expe­ri­ence accu­mu­lat­ed from the observed data. ML has become one of the hottest fields of study today, tak­en up by under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents from 15 dif­fer­ent majors at Cal­tech. This course bal­ances the­o­ry and prac­tice, and cov­ers the math­e­mat­i­cal as well as the heuris­tic aspects. The lec­tures fol­low each oth­er in a sto­ry-like fash­ion.

A real Cal­tech course (it’s not watered down at all), the course assumes a famil­iar­i­ty with basic prob­a­bil­i­ty, matri­ces, and cal­cu­lus.

Start your future with a Data Science Certificate.

The lec­tures can be found on YouTube, iTunes U and this Cal­tech web­site, which hosts slides and oth­er course mate­ri­als. The pro­fes­sor wrote the course text­book, also called Learn­ing from Data.

Learn­ing From Data will be per­ma­nent­ly added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, part of our ever-grow­ing 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:

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

The Pio­neer­ing Physics TV Show, The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse, Is Now on YouTube: 52 Com­plete Episodes from Cal­tech

The Neu­ronal Basis of Con­scious­ness Course: A Free Online Course from Cal­tech

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The Pioneering Physics TV Show, The Mechanical Universe, Is Now on YouTube: 52 Complete Episodes from Caltech

in Online Courses, Physics | May 8th, 2017

In Decem­ber, Cal­tech announced that the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed TV series, The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse… And Beyond, has been made avail­able in its entire­ty on YouTube. Cre­at­ed at Cal­tech and aired on PBS from 1985–86, the 52-episode series offers an intro­duc­tion to col­lege-lev­el physics, cov­er­ing every­thing from the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion begun by Coper­ni­cus, to quan­tum the­o­ry. A uni­ver­si­ty web page offers more details on the pro­duc­tion:

The series was based on the Physics 1a and 1b cours­es devel­oped by David Good­stein, the Frank J. Gilloon Dis­tin­guished Teach­ing and Ser­vice Pro­fes­sor and Pro­fes­sor of Physics and Applied Physics, Emer­i­tus.

Each episode opens and clos­es with Good­stein lec­tur­ing to his fresh­man physics class in 201 E. Bridge, pro­vid­ing philo­soph­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal, and often humor­ous insight into the day’s top­ic. The show also con­tains hun­dreds of com­put­er ani­ma­tion seg­ments, cre­at­ed by JPL com­put­er graph­ics engi­neer James F. Blinn, as the pri­ma­ry tool of instruc­tion. Dynam­ic loca­tion footage and his­tor­i­cal re-cre­ations are also used to stress the fact that sci­ence is a human endeav­or…

Although the series was designed as a col­lege-lev­el course, “thou­sands of high school teach­ers across the US came to depend on it for instruc­tion­al and inspi­ra­tional use,” Good­stein says. “The lev­el of instruc­tion in the US was, and remains, abysmal­ly low, and these 52 pro­grams filled a great void.”

You can stream all 52 episodes above. Or find them on Youtube and Dai­ly­Mo­tion. They will also be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Vis­it this Cal­tech web­site to get more infor­ma­tion on the show.

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:

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

The Famous Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics: The New Online Edi­tion (in HTML5)

Quan­tum Physics Made Rel­a­tive­ly Sim­ple: A Mini Course from Nobel Prize-Win­ning Physi­cist Hans Bethe

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David Mamet Teaches Dramatic Writing in a New Online Course

in Online Courses, Writing | April 25th, 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.

David Mamet, one of Amer­i­ca’s pre­em­i­nent play­wrights and screen­writ­ers, is now offer­ing an online course on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing over at Mas­ter­Class. Fea­tur­ing 26 video lessons and a down­load­able work­book, the course will take you through Mamet’s “process for turn­ing life’s strangest moments into dra­mat­ic art. He’ll teach you the rules of dra­ma, the nuances of dia­logue, and the skills to devel­op your own voice and cre­ate your mas­ter­piece.” The cost is $90. It’s not every day that you can get inside the cre­ative process of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning writer of Glen­gar­ry Glen Ross. So per­haps it’s mon­ey well spent. (If you want to give this course as a gift, just click here.)

As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, Mas­ter­Class has enlist­ed oth­er accom­plished fig­ures to teach cours­es on their craft–eg, Steve Mar­tin does com­e­dy; Wern­er Her­zog, film­mak­ing; Aaron Sorkin, screen­writ­ing; Christi­na Aguil­era, singing, and Frank Gehry, archi­tec­ture, to name a few. You can browse their com­plete list of cours­es here. And, for $180, you can now get a year-long pass to all Mas­ter­class cours­es.

If you’re look­ing for free cours­es, check out 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!

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Peter Singer’s Course on Effective Altruism Puts Philosophy Into Worldly Action

in Online Courses | April 20th, 2017

This week, Peter Singer’s online course on Effec­tive Altru­ism is get­ting under­way on Cours­era. Based on the philoso­pher’s books, The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do, the course intro­duces stu­dents to the con­cept of Effec­tive Altru­ism, which asserts that “liv­ing a ful­ly eth­i­cal life involves doing the most good one can.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly, the course promis­es to exam­ine the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings of Effec­tive Altru­ism, “present remark­able peo­ple who have restruc­tured their lives in accor­dance with it, and think about how effec­tive altru­ism can be put into prac­tice in your own life.” The intro­duc­to­ry video for the course appears above. You can enroll free here.

A phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton, Singer first became well-known when he pub­lished Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975 and helped put an intel­lec­tu­al frame­work around the ani­mal rights move­ment. More recent­ly, he has brought his util­i­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy to bear on glob­al pover­ty. Some­times con­tro­ver­sial, Singer is unde­ni­ably influ­en­tial. (He was named world’s third most influ­en­tial glob­al thought leader in 2013.) The Effec­tive Altru­ism course gives you a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to famil­iar­ize your­self with Singer’s style of thought, and put phi­los­o­phy into mean­ing­ful action.

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:

The Life You Can Save in 3 Min­utes, by Peter Singer

Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Inter­views with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

 

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An Introduction to Game Theory & Strategic Thinking: A Free Course from Yale University

in Economics, Online Courses | April 7th, 2017

Taught by Ben Polak, an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor and now Provost at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, this free course offers an intro­duc­tion to game the­o­ry and strate­gic think­ing. Draw­ing on exam­ples from eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, the movies and beyond, the lec­tures cov­er top­ics essen­tial to under­stand­ing Game theory–including “dom­i­nance, back­ward induc­tion, the Nash equi­lib­ri­um, evo­lu­tion­ary sta­bil­i­ty, com­mit­ment, cred­i­bil­i­ty, asym­met­ric infor­ma­tion, adverse selec­tion, and sig­nal­ing.”

Since Game The­o­ry offers “a way of think­ing about strate­gic sit­u­a­tions,” the course will “teach you some strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tions to take into account [when] mak­ing your choic­es,” and “to pre­dict how oth­er peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions [will] behave when they are in strate­gic set­tings.”

The 24 lec­tures can be streamed above. (They’re also on YouTube and iTunes in audio and video). A com­plete syl­labus can be found be on this Yale web site. Texts used in the course are the fol­low­ing:

Game The­o­ry will be added to our list of Free Eco­nom­ics 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!

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