Interactive course about “everyday” data science (tigyog.app)
Last year, I wrote the book Everyday Data Science. It was #1 on HN! [1]
This year, I've been working with Jim Fisher on a new kind of interactive course. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure, except you'll learn Thompson sampling, differential equations, and Bayesian-optimal pricing.
After several months, the first two chapters are ready! Every word, button, and sound has been painstakingly crafted. Try out the first chapter to see what we mean! [2]
The course will be $99, but it’s $29 today, as a thanks for helping us build the next 8 chapters! Let us know what you think :-)
- Andrew Carr [3]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253281 [2]: https://tigyog.app/d/L:X07z8laLyz/r/when-life-gives-you-lemo... [3]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr
59 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadAndrew's writing shows off what you can make with this medium. It's a bit like blogging. Try it out and let me know how it goes! (Currently it’s a WYSIWYG editor, though I’m also working on a Markdown+git interface. Let me know if you’re interested.)
- Jim Fisher [2]
P.S.: Thanks to one user reporting an Apple Pay UI glitch. I'm on it! In the meantime, ordinary Stripe card payment should work.
[1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/
I like your style!
Expecting this post is an "A/B Testing"
Q: Which group am I actually in now? Is this group "A" or "B" ?
:-)
(Edit: this comment is a stupid meta-meta-joke, please ignore :-)
Exit: oh… that was the joke. I thought I was clever
Also, yeah, Distill is amazing! Every post is a work of art. Learned so much from it.
>"I'd enjoy hearing some concrete discussion of what unique vision you have for improving the intuition of people trying to do data science, and how this helps humanity, and your journey beyond A/B testing marketing techniques.
So far i've not received it from any replies (including yours) and haven't seen it happen in any other comment threads so far (including ones which could be made by yourself).
The lack of thoughtful discussion makes me believe this post is meant to be just a marketing/sales pitch (something I covered as a potential issue in my comment) rather than a post for having deep, thoughtful, expansive discussions on this topic.
Like I said, I think you are perhaps the one who isn't in sync with what kind of conversations are valued.
Distill.pub for example, despite being written by people who worked at OpenAI and (also funded by) Google Brain, makes nearly no mention of either. They've managed to successfully accomplish their goal (creating resources to help people improve their intuition about machine learning) without resorting to those tactics.
A Show HN is not really the place to vent that dissatisfaction, though, at least not in that form. Take a look at:
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
People upvote highly emotive stuff all the time even if it's at odds with HN's guidelines so whatever it suggests, it doesn't suggest the place on HN where people showcase their work is also the place for harangues. People like harangues! It's just not the subforum for them.
https://mlu-explain.github.io/
I wondered how the creator of this course could guarantee the course would be available forever, and what a headache it must be to continue to maintain the hosting/content if sales taper off. Outsourcing that job to a service which is hosting many such courses (and with new ones continually added) makes a lot more sense here, and of course you have bills to pay too. That 20% commission isn't just covering the cost of time you put into the course builder and hosting now, it covers hosting in perpetuity.
Side note on nav UX. I expect a right click on logo to be able to open up the tigyog landing page, not save image dialog.
As a comparison, Leanpub charges 20% for books/courses (not sure if those courses are on par with the features offered by tigyog). You'd get better pricing with Gumroad, but no interactive features on that platform. 20% is more than fair in my opinion.
Everything here screams "we're sales people first, content people second" and that's not worth my time. I'll choose quiet confidence over showmanship.
But the interactive prompts are great. They really get you to engage with the content. The humorous tone strikes a good balance and doesn’t get distracting as well.
I’ll probably buy the course once more chapters are released.
The next chapter should be out next month - stay tuned! (Which reminds me, we should probably have a "subscribe for updates" button, without having to buy it first ...)
I didn’t leave a review because There weren’t many and I didn’t want to sour your sales with a 1-star, but I now kind of regret that.
The course looks cool, but it honestly just feels like a monetizing attempt on something that really didn’t deserve much money to begin with.
This especially if it’s a rehash of the same material (which maybe you missed in my previous comment, but I didn’t find to be high-quality).
>(Although the course is not on higher quality paper)
Is a joke, because this course isn't a book at all.
I self published the book to prove I could do something like that. It got much more traction than I had planned and, in hindsight, I wish I had paid for editing and formatting as a minimum.
As for the quality of the paperback, that was unfortunately out of my control as I used Amazon's print on demand services. Definitely a painful lesson for me.
In any case, I appreciate this comment and others here. I'm definitely working towards much higher substance with increased polish. :)
It would be cool if you provided links to further reading on the various concepts, for extracurricular studies.
Overall the style and ethos feels similar to Pluto.jl, which I think puts you in good company :)
Bonus points for working almost flawlessly on mobile (the table with 0’s and 1’s overflowed and was pushed offscreen.)
Good spot on the table. I'll edit the example to fit, and make math blocks scroll more nicely if they overflow.