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Ask HN: Recommend me a course on Coursera

603 points by Eugeleo ↗ HN
My university just provided us with free Coursera accounts until the end of summer. However, there's so many courses to choose from that I don't know where to start! Please recommend me a course that you liked, preferably from the following areas:

- UX design

- bioinformatics

- statistics for data science

- mathematical analysis

- algebra or category theory

But of course, you don't need to stick to those categories, I'd love to learn about anything new!

141 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] thread
djhaskin987
The cryptography course taught at Stanford I have found to be excellent. it really helped me gain an understanding of what I MAC's were, cbc encryption, common problems with encryption schemes, etc. after taking the course I was able to find a bug in our company's software that they didn't know about or that they didn't know was a bug.
raegis
I agree--I very strongly recommend this course. I binged Dan Boneh's lectures on a late Friday night like I was watching Netflix. I'm serious.
droithomme
> bioinformatics

The Honors Track of the UCSD series is really great.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics

It's super hard and as a side effect you learn a ton about very interesting, amazing, and useful algorithms that you'd never even hear about in a top notch CS program.

Eugeleo
That sounds great! I'll check it out tomorrow.

Some people here in Europe take bioinformatics as a shorthand of "database management, pipeline construction, and scaffold building" --- I'm glad to see the course is more algorithm oriented (maybe with a bit of DS thrown in as well).

anderspitman
Surprised this is buried so deep. These courses are excellent.
noobrunner
https://www.coursera.org/learn/genetics-evolution Beginners level.Dr. Noor is an excellent instructor.
Eugeleo
Thanks! The teacher makes or breaks the course, and that is exactly why I asked for personal recommendations.

As an aside, the world of genetics (and molecular biology in general) is beyond fascinating. I remember coming home after one the 5th or 6th lecture on Cell biology and thinking "wow, take your worst spaghetti code and imagine the pasta becomes sentient --- that is us".

noobrunner
very well said ! I am wondering if anyone here has recommendations on where to go next after I finish this course ?
airstrike
https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning with Andrew Ng
interdrift
not that good of a course, from someone who already did it
ronyfadel
Care to explain why? Anyone else who did it care to chime in?
xfer
I took it a few years back. It was an introduction to ML course.
X6S1x6Okd1st
Due to the low quality of the video and audio I honestly struggled to want to go through the material.
pvarangot
It was good like 10 years ago and it did age well but it's a little bit outdated on the video/audio quality and the tools and algorithms you learn about. I think it's surprisingly up to date for a fundamentals course that old, but still a bit outdated.
jacobedawson
I second that - great content, but terrible audio / video quality, unfortunately, which makes it less enjoyable and a bit of a struggle tbh.
blcArmadillo
I took it several years back and enjoyed it. I liked that the course had you implement the whole training pipeline yourself rather than using a framework (not sure if the newer class does the same). While you would likely not do this in practice, I felt it helped my intuition when using the frameworks since I had a sense of how the internals were working.
billfruit
It requires Matlab for instance.
Javantea_
I completed the course with Octave, but yeah this language is a hurdle that people don't need.
adonese
back then, matlab was the thing
goksankobe
actually, Matlab is still the thing depending on the domain you are working with. I don't get the hate towards Matlab generally from CS people. Maybe because it's paid?
billfruit
Rather it is because it is a poorly suited language, in that isn't aware of modern programming approaches.
chispamed
I'm doing it along with Ng's newer courses at the moment and I really like that he focuses on all the basics mathematically as well and not only conceptually which gives you a deeper understanding machine learning imo. However as others have said, the audio quality is subpar and personally I find it hard to motivate myself for the programming challenges in Octave. So my suggestion would be to just view the videos and take notes and then do the newer courses and their challenges.
lotophage
It's the course that launched Coursera (formerly ml-class.org), and is still one of the most highly rated on Coursera, so I dare say that you are in the minority with that opinion.
silverdrake11
I would recommend Andrew Ng's updated course on Deep Learning with python instead. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/deep-learning
airstrike
I took it about 6-7 years ago, so I totally believe you
tasubotadas
Yeah - the updated version is much better (I've completed both of them) just because you don't need to struggle with Matlab.

Overall, this course is extremely good mostly because Ng covers the essential theoretical topics and gives some practical advice. Also, the topics are explained really well and you do not need to look up additional material. Also, I really appreciate that he took the time to derive those equations while others just drop the results.

kevas
I'm started the Deep Learning course last night and I too think it's really good. After you finished the series of courses, what did you move on to?
sodez117
As someone that's new to ML but interested in it, do you recommend people skip the original course? Does it cover the same things?
mkolodny
Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society is my favorite course I've ever taken:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/design

It's taught by Karl Ulrich, a UPenn/Wharton professor/Vice Dean who helped design the Xootr scooter, Gushers, and many other awesome products. He teaches most of the course in his garage. Taking the course feels like you're his apprentice.

elliekelly
The Science of Wellbeing[1] taught by Yale’s Dr. Laurie Santos lives up to the hype. It’s been discussed on HN a few times[2] which is how I stumbled upon it.

If you don’t mind my asking, did your school give you access to coursera to earn credit while the campus is shut down? Or is it just something interesting and fun for students who might be inclined to learn something new while they’re stuck at home? Either way, props to your school! And enjoy whatever classes you decide to take!

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

mportela
NYU's Tandon School Engineering is doing the same with edX (since it is part of the organization), but students won't earn credits.
Eugeleo
Thanks for the recommendation, sounds great!

As mentioned above, I think the credit is due to Coursera more than my university; either way, at least they've let me know that something like this is possible.

It's just for fun; most of our courses are now taught over Zoom or similar services, assignments are handled digitally and if it wasn't for the low-quality webcams, you'd almost forget something is out of the ordinary.

jhymn
I recently took a Coursera course on Schizophrenia and found it fascinating. YMMV of course.
master_yoda_1
most of the courses on coursera are for uninitiated and have very shallow content (there are some rare exception). So if you like you can search for a good book or some video lecture from good university. like this is for statistical learning "https://online.stanford.edu/courses/sohs-ystatslearning-stat...
notechback
I think you are generalising too much, there are also some good courses on Coursera. But many are more shallow than e.g. EdX, which has some excellent more in depth courses.
tasubotadas
That's true. I think most of the recent courses from John Hopkins university illustrate this the best. They even have a separate course for Linear Regression!

However, if you spend enough time sifting through the junk, there are some decent material.

randomstring
I recommend the meta-cognition course: Learning how to Learn.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

The primary instructor, Dr. Barbara Oakley, wrote the book, _A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)_ that isn't just about learning math.

xtagon
I second this, and if you're not sure where to start then this is a great one because it will give you some study tools to use on your next course(s)!
tasubotadas
I can second this too. The presentation was a bit crude sometimes but the course was good nevertheless.
bhaprayan
I enjoyed taking Model Thinking: https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking

It's designed to be a foundation course for subsequent social science classes, but I personally found the exposure to models from different fields of study to be quite insightful.

If you're interested, there's also a book by the professor on the same topic: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/39088592-the-model-th...

radiowave
Agreed. I took Model Thinking years back, and it's probably the course that I most enjoyed (as in: just for it's own sake). I had no idea there was now also a book.
suls
Came here to say the same. Especially now that the world is struggling with SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, understanding these different models helps a lot!

Last but not least, Scott E. Page is a great educator. Glad to hear there is a book from him now -- his papers were a good read as well during/after the course.

xkgt
I took this course few years back as well. Quite enjoyed it at that time. Recommended!
pmohun
Model Thinking is the best Coursera course that I've taken. The lessons have practically applied to many areas of my personal and professional life in a way that far exceeded my expectations.

Scott is one of the best teachers on the topic, and makes complex models simple and intuitive to understand.

It is a long course, but well worth it. Cannot recommend it enough.

mportela
+1. One of the best courses I took in Coursera, especially because my background is in Engineering, not Social Sciences.
the_snooze
Securing Digital Democracy https://www.coursera.org/learn/digital-democracy

I went through this not long after it was first offered following the 2012 elections, and it introduced me to the amazing world of security and human factors. There's more to secure systems design than just smart engineering. You have to give a lot of attention to people and priorities, and elections are a great place to see that in action.

notechback
Seconded I've taken a number of courses and this is by far the best mooc I've taken.
_jal
I personally found this to be a great one.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/psychological-first-aid

Having even passing familiarity with a way to think about helping people in crisis is extremely useful when you're in the moment.

derangedHorse
Now that looks like an interesting recommendation! It looks like it can offer information I can’t find elsewhere, unlike most of Coursera’s other classes
dhawalhs
Here is a list of all Coursera courses sorted by ratings: https://www.classcentral.com/provider/coursera?sort=rating-u...

You can also filter by subjects i.e Computer Science, Data Science. Humanities, Mathematics, etc.

Disclaimer: I am the founder.

jlengrand
Oh, thanks so much for that! This link showed me I have interest for things I did not even know existed on the platform. I mean, Mountains 101, Poetry? Awesome!
Ao7bei3s
Is there a plan to get more advanced courses?

I'm asking because there seems to be an extreme bias towards beginners courses, or content that is rather limited in breadth and depth compared to what a university might teach during a full masters degree.

ie, there's about 50 security intro courses (with lots of overlap of course), one "advanced" course that's been delayed for long and isn't all that advanced (Crypto II from Stanford), but nothing that even comes close to the various full-semester courses covering particular niches that I took in university (for example, we did one full semester course on each of: symmetric crypto, asymmetric crypto, side channels, "special topics" (random stuff), a cryptoanalysis lab, and 3 more niche things - and those are just the pure crypto courses, and even/especially within that area I feel I've barely scratched the surface).

These university courses cover not only more topics than Coursera covers (overall; there are many things even in this niche that Coursera has that we weren't taught, which is neat), but within each we went into considerable depth. In particular we tended to approach them from a rigorous mathematical perspective (number theory, linear algebra, statistics, proofs, etc). My worry here is that Coursera might be more geared towards people that don't need to learn the topics well enough to be actually able to use them professionally, let alone academically. ie, more like edutainment than education (no offense intended. I wasn't sure if I should include that sentence cause it might sound harsh, but I think it illustrates what I'm getting at).

We also didn't have courses that are blatant advertisements (#18568).

I don't want to put Coursera down (quite the opposite), I am genuinely interested in your answer - Is it just me not seeing everything available? Is the field I'm (slightly) knowledgeable about an outlier? Or am I missing the point of Coursera (maybe it's more focused on training industry professionals than academics than universities?) Or is it correct, and if so, is it intentional or unintentional? Is there a single field of study where Coursera could replace a university partly/largely/mostly/entirely? Will there be?

rfrey
Your parent is the founder of classcentral.com, not Coursera.
reilly3000
There should be less ratings of advanced materials, and there should be less coursework. Advanced study is the long tail of learning.
harperlee
That should not affect the rating by much with an appropriate sorting. See: https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...
bjterry
I would expect people who take advanced courses to rate systematically differently from people who take beginner courses. For comparisons between similar courses it's probably fine, but would be hard to use the scores to compare the value of beginner courses to advanced courses.

Of course, even the definition of better here is so ill-defined it probably is of no practical significance.

randcraw
If you want classes that are more advanced or that go into greater depth, I recommend the courses offered by edX or Stanford-online or MIT OpenCourseware. These are full-term for-credit courses with video lectures at top schools that you can 'audit' for free, though few or none will grade your homework or projects unless you pay full tuition. By contrast, 95% of Coursera or Udemy courses are much shorter and more introductory.
randcraw
If you want classes that are more advanced or that go into greater depth, I recommend those offered by edX or Stanford-online or MIT OpenCourseware. These are full-term for-credit courses with video lectures (MIT, less so) at top schools that you can 'audit' for free, though none will grade your homework or projects unless you pay full tuition. By contrast, 90% of Coursera or Udemy courses are much shorter and more introductory.
signaru
Many thanks! This is a gem. Within a few minutes, I've seen interesting courses that Google search never found for me.
smabie
Let me recommend you an udacity course instead. This is hands down the best course I've ever taken in my life:

AI for Trading https://www.udacity.com/course/ai-for-trading--nd880

Includes an introduction to finance/markets, and goes into strategies, multi-factor models, and deep learning. Great projects too!

vba
I haven’t taken it, but what made it so great. Do you/can you apply what you’ve learnt?
smabie
Yeah, totally. If you're talking professionally, it helped me make the transition from a pure dev role at a financial firm to a quantitative front-end role. If you're talking about personal projects, it helps a lot if you want to develop your own quantitative trading strategies. I've been using https://www.quantopian.com/ to develop strategies and am currently trying to get on the board for their contest https://www.quantopian.com/contest. I'm hoping to try and get an allocation from them. They currently manage somewhere around a couple hundred millions dollars and allocate money to various algorithms that win the context, allowing you to net a percentage of profits of the strategy.
chrisatumd
It looked interesting - is it really $400 a month for access to the course, or is there some other way to just take the course without some kind of certificate?
mettamage
Wait, how did you make both notes in org and HTML? Can you write org mode notes and compile them to HTML? Is that it?

Or did you really write it twice?

(I've never used Emacs)

fredoliveira
Org makes it very easy to export to multiple formats (including HTML). Definitely worth exploring, and definitely worth using emacs for :-)
tasubotadas
I've taken it but I wouldn't recommend it - it was pretty shallow. That guy used to have a more complete version of the course on Coursera. I believe that it became a specialization.
nightski
That was my fear. Looks like an OK course but I'd expect some pretty outstanding quality for $400 a month! That's crazy pricing (more than an ivy league credit hour am I right?).
xfer
I am taking the Modelling series(https://www.coursera.org/learn/basic-modeling) and Discrete optimization(https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization). Great way to get your feet wet in the world of NP-hard problems.
dowakin
Discrete optimization is the best course for me. It's really challenging one. I spend about a month for getting A score for all tasks - but it's rewarding experience.

I miss professor Pascal. I hope he will create a second course!

hgoury
I took watched some of the lectures and did a few exercises when I had a similar course at University, it was great indeed.
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fbru02
I really liked the approximation algorithms from a french university
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accidentalrebel
I recommend an audiobook course from Audible called

The Philosophers Toolkit: How to be the most rational person in any room by The Great Courses https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Philosophers-Toolkit-How-to-B...

It teaches you mental models on how to think and find a solution to a problem. It explains the concepts behind each model quite well.

Topics include how to determine a valid argument, an iron clad argument, using heuristics to solve problems, among other things.

My only gripe with the course I linked is that it is an audio version of what seems to be a video version on the Great Courses website. You might want to check that out too.

airstrike
I had a credit on my account so just picked this up. Thanks for the recommendation – seems very interesting.
sunilgiri
Thanks for the recommendation. Plan to use a remaining credit to buy this course.
seankross
I wrote this course, an introduction to using the command line: https://www.coursera.org/learn/unix
int32767
Oh! Speaking of command line and the basics, this one from MIT is amazing. Covers all the basics.

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education - https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

Contents: Course overview + the shell, Shell Tools and Scripting Editors (Vim), Data Wrangling, Command-line Environment, Version Control (Git), Debugging and Profiling, Metaprogramming, Security and Cryptography

igorstellar
any chance you are going to make advanved level class as well? I covered basics a while ago, looking to work on efficiency
hagope
Coursera has great content from Industry partners (Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, IBM etc) that teach everything you need to know for hacking in cloud. These skills are not widely taught in University, but skills are highly valued in the Tech industry. Three specializations (a collection of courses) that are hands-on and I would highly recommend 1.) https://www.coursera.org/specializations/aws-fundamentals 2.) https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gcp-data-machine-le... 3.) Anything from deeplearning.ai [disclosure: I work at Coursera]