edX Free Courses

[Pascal]

edX is a non-profit enterprise by Harvard and MIT which gives courses for interactive study via the web. They're all free and start in Spring, covering software, computer graphics, justice, computer science etc.

https://www.edx.org/

I've signed up for the Justice one, sounds interesting

[rong]

My brother in law did some game theory course on line. They were also provided free by a top American university. Not sure if its the same providers but he was impressed with them.

[rong]

Did some Googling. The ones he did were from Stanford.

[Jack Sawyer]

Awesome find, Pascal! TY

[NightGizmo]

My brother in law did some game theory course on line. They were also provided free by a top American university. Not sure if its the same providers but he was impressed with them.

Through Coursera, which offers a ton of free courses from various universities. Looks like edX is new direct competition.

[surviva316]

I was gonna make a joke about 4th and 26, but this thread deserves better than that. I'm very near certain I'm gonna take the class on Justice. I wanted to go more out on a limb than that (not to sound like an insufferable twat, but I've probably already read the entire reading list except for the supplementary material), but there aren't a lot of offerings in the humanities, and like whatever, I'm pretty fuckin certain this course would challenge me regardless of what classes I took at South Carolina.

[BooG690]

I just signed up for the game theory course on Coursera. Anyone wanna sign up with me and study buddy? I've also signed up for Modern World History, Financial Planning, and Programming Languages.

https://www.coursera.org/course/gametheory
https://www.coursera.org/course/financialplanning
https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld
https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang

[wufwugy]

Any kind of accreditation with these courses?

[Pascal]

For edX you get a certificate

[BooG690]

As for Coursera.

[spoonitnow]

lol @ learning useless shit and not even getting a piece of paper that nobody cares about for it

[surviva316]

I registered, but I guess now I have to wait for the course to begin for me to do anything else? They didn't tell me when class begins, so hopefully they send me an email alert or something?

I was kinda hoping that all this hippy perspective on education would include something like, "Learning doesn't have a beginning or an end, so here's the reading list, GO NUTS!"

[rong]

Yeah I'm a little uncertain on the structure as well. I like the look of the Harvard justice course and will prob take it. But I'm not exactly sure what it involves. Only looked on my phone which makes exploration difficult, but I don't see a start date or timetable. It could be that its all done at your own pace as and when you can be bothered.

[Pascal]

Harvard justice course begins in "Spring 2013" so I guess they'll just give you more info when they have it. Some of the other courses have specific start dates set

There are weekly discussions apparently rong

[a500lbgorilla]

The idea of picking one course from one of these online venues and taking it as a forum intrigues me.

I'm always up for another effort-dump. Like reading a dry and difficult non-fiction book.

[celtic123]

https://class.coursera.org/proglang-...01/class/index
https://class.coursera.org/gametheor...02/class/index
https://www.coursera.org/course/algebra

cheers PAscal

[BooG690]

The idea of picking one course from one of these online venues and taking it as a forum intrigues me.

I'm always up for another effort-dump. Like reading a dry and difficult non-fiction book.

Both Celtic and I are taking these classes:
https://class.coursera.org/gametheor...02/class/index
https://class.coursera.org/proglang-...01/class/index

One more and we have a group. We'll start a thread and people will surely follow. Game Theory is already one week in while Programming Languages is starting any day now.

[rong]

Boog, what did you cover in week one?

[BooG690]

defining games, Nash equilibrium, pareto optimality, definitions of utility, agents, etc.

[rong]

Can you post the syllabus?

[BooG690]

Course Topics

Release Dates Due Dates
1/6 (midnight PST) Week 1: Introduction
Introduction, overview, uses of game theory, some applications and examples, and formal definitions of: the normal form, payoffs, strategies, pure strategy Nash equilibrium, dominant strategies..

PSet 1 Release 1/13 (midnight PST) PSet 1 Suggested Deadline
1/13 (midnight PST) Week 2: Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium
pure and mixed strategy Nash equilibria.

PSet 2 Release 1/20 (midnight PST) PSet 1 Full Credit Deadline
PSet 2 Suggested Deadline

1/20 (midnight PST) Week 3: Alternate Solution Concepts
Iterative removal of strictly dominated strategies, minimax strategies and the minimax theorem for zero-sum game, correlated equilibria.

PSet 3 Release 1/27 (midnight PST) PSet 2 Full Credit Deadline
PSet 3 Suggested Deadline

1/27 (midnight PST) Week 4: Extensive-Form Games
Perfect information games: trees, players assigned to nodes, payoffs, backward Induction, subgame perfect equilibrium, introduction to imperfect-information games, mixed versus behavioral strategies.

PSet 4 Release 2/3 (midnight PST) PSet 3 Full Credit Deadline
PSet 4 Suggested Deadline

2/3 (midnight PST) Week 5: Repeated Games
Repeated prisoners dilemma, finite and infinite repeated games, limited-average versus future-discounted reward, folk theorems, stochastic games and learning.

PSet 5 Release 2/10 (midnight PST) PSet 4 Full Credit Deadline
PSet 5 Suggested Deadline

2/10 (midnight PST) Week 6: Bayesian Games
General definitions, ex ante/interim Bayesian Nash equilibrium.

PSet 6 Release 2/17 (midnight PST) PSet 5 Full Credit Deadline
PSet 6 Suggested Deadline

2/17 (midnight PST) Week 7: Coalitional Games
Transferable utility cooperative games, Shapley value, Core, applications.

PSet 7 Release 2/24 (midnight PST) PSet 6 Full Credit Deadline
PSet 7 Suggested Deadline

2/24 (midnight PST) Week 8: Final Exam Available
3/3 (midnight PST) PSet 7 Full Credit Deadline
Week 9: Final Exam Due 3/10 (midnight PST) Final Exam Deadline
Partial Credit Deadline for all PSets

[a500lbgorilla]

How much is each Problem Set worth on the final grade?

[BooG690]

Problem Sets (seventy percent of grade): There will also be graded weekly problem sets that you will also answer online, but may work through offline; those must be completed within two weeks of the time that they are posted in order to be graded for full credit. If you miss a problem set deadline, you may complete it before the end of the course for half credit. You may discuss problems from the problem sets with other students in an online forum, without providing explicit answers.

Final Exam (thirty percent of grade): There will be an online final exam that you will have to complete within two weeks of its posting. Once you begin the exam, you will have four hours to complete it.

[a500lbgorilla]

I'm in. But I've got shit on my plate through saturday.

[BooG690]

The first problem set is due on January 20th for 100% credit. It's not too hard if you have a small background on game theory though.

[rong]

If anyone is up for a study group for the justice course I'm up for it. No point me doing the game theory one as I've already done a similar module at uni and can't be assed to repeat it.

[Pascal]

I'm in rong

[a500lbgorilla]

[a500lbgorilla]

And I'd avoid getting into too many of these. Probably 30% of the people who start out will finish. It takes sustained effort, these effort-dumps, so taking on too many only increases the likelihood you flake somewhere.

[Hoopy]

And I'd avoid getting into too many of these. Probably 30% of the people who start out will finish. It takes sustained effort, these effort-dumps, so taking on too many only increases the likelihood you flake somewhere.

Yeah exactly, I saw a couple that looked interesting but only chose to do the astrobiology course since 1 at a time is more manageable than 2-3.

[rong]

Rilla, does that mean you're interested in doing the justice course and taking part in a study group or not?

[kiwiMark]

Tell him what you got for question 1 and he'll decide.

[rong]

A.

[BooG690]

Tell him what you got for question 1 and he'll decide.

[surviva316]

Oh cool, there's a study group going on in this thread, so now I don't need to feel left out. I'm in.

[surviva316]

Speaking of study groups:

spoonitnow = Abed
wufwugy = Britta
jyms = Pierce
bigred = Dean
OngBonga = Senor Chang

WHO WILL BE OUR JEFF WINGER?

[kiwiMark]

I guess that makes me Troy.

[surviva316]

I did consider it, yes. I also thought dranger, but he's not innocent enough. Remember that nish guy? Maybe him.

[Galapogos]

Speaking of study groups:

spoonitnow = Abed
wufwugy = Britta
jyms = Pierce
bigred = Dean
OngBonga = Senor Chang

WHO WILL BE OUR JEFF WINGER?

You're more concerned about getting a Jeff Winger than an Annie?

ygos?

[bigred]

Speaking of study groups:

spoonitnow = Abed
wufwugy = Britta
jyms = Pierce
bigred = Dean
OngBonga = Senor Chang

WHO WILL BE OUR JEFF WINGER?

YOU'RE ALL EXPELLED

[a500lbgorilla]

Rilla, does that mean you're interested in doing the justice course and taking part in a study group or not?

nah

[a500lbgorilla]

Though I'm very interested in the course material, I feel that I'm better vested in the game theory course.

Please make your progress through the course public. I'm not being a douchenozzle as I genuinely want to know what the course covers.

I just have the sense that I'd buck it if I tried.

[surviva316]

Gee, I can't wait for the Justice course to fulfill its promise of existing.

[surviva316]

what the hell

[Pascal]

still says spring so gonna guess march/april?

[surviva316]

March 12th, 2013. Sweet, I should have way more free time by then.

[rong]

Ideal. Should start a job just before then for more money that takes far less of my time. I'm hoping I can take this seriously and actually spend time on it, especially as its not a course full of questions with right/wrong answers. That's my normal type of courses which means the moment I figure out how I'm done with that part. So I imagine this to be far more time consuming.

[surviva316]

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/aristotle/ There ya go. I just saved you a lot of time on what will be the worst part of the class.

If you're fucked for time when we're going over Locke, then you can just skim. You could very easily explain Locke to any 10-year-old who grew up in America; it's just super intuitive stuff to any modern westerner.

Kant is 18th century and he was a very deep thinker, so that's gonna be pretty dense stuff. But the dude is fucking brilliant (if not extremely racist) so if you just suffer through it, then it will all be worth.

Then once you get through that, you're in the 20th century, which is nice because the writing won't be so dry. Mill isn't very tough at all, and it should be especially intuitive for poker-minded people. I know nothing about Rawls, but I've heard good things and he's so modern that I'm not worried.

[surviva316]

Political/ethical philosophy is easy. You might disagree with this or that, but there's not going to be all that much that's tough to wrap your mind around.

It's not like epistemology and metaphysics. Understanding a text on metaphysics is kinda like having to understand what the fuck is going on in The Matrix, whereas understanding a text on ethics is like being able to follow Indecent Proposal.

Ethics just tends to be a lot more intuitive (maybe by necessity? Maybe our intuition and the logical extensions from those intuitions are the only basis for ethics in the first place) than wondering what the universe is made out of, and where it came from, and what drives it now, and how much can we know about it, and how much can we know to what degree we can know about stuff, and all that crazy crap.

[Pascal]

Looking forward to this a lot too, thanks for the links surviva

[surviva316]

So it's March 12th. Now what?

[surviva316]

Okay, they posted everything at long last . . . except for the reading list. That's fine; if school's taught me anything, it's that I can only have an interest in things at the appropriate time to have interest in said thing. Maybe they have to deal with copyright restrictions because it's free material or something; I don't know. At least they've posted the list though.

Anyway, did the first lecture and replied to the prompt. There are 900 replies already, though, so it's not much conducive to actual discussion. I replied to one person, so I guess me and that one person may or may not end up having some kind of one-on-one.

Not trying to sound whiny. I realize I probably sound whiny in this thread. I am appreciative of whatever free education Harvard is offering me, and I have enjoyed it more than I would whatever alternate thing I'd be doing right now.

[surviva316]

"Even if we succeed, over a lifetime, in bringing our moral intuitions and principled commitments into alignment, what con$ dence can we have that the result is anything more than a self-consistent skein of prejudice?"

Damn yo. I have a new candidate for an epigraph for my book, haha.

[rong]

How long was the first lecture. May have free time tonight. Was gonna win monies instead but meh, my ftr tshirts say making money is fun but that don't make it so. Yeah that's right, I said tshirts, as in more than one. It's because I'm a winner.

[Pascal]

#winning

[rong]

20 mins. Ideal.

[surviva316]

20 mins. Ideal.

Yeah, they'll be releasing two lectures per week. The first two are 23 mins and 28 mins.

I'm thinking maybe the only way to get any traction in the discussion boards is for us to search and reply to each others' thoughts. Just the discussion for people who answered "yes" to the poll is already up to 87 pages lol. I'm "surviva," and I've only posted in the "Yes to poll question" discussion, if anyone wants to reply to my responses. If you want to share your handle and let us know when you post, then maybe we can get a discussion going in those boards and up-vote each other and all that fun stuff.

Otherwise, it is a Great Wall of Text.

[rong]

Lectures from Kevin Spacey. Cool!

[rong]

Agreed. I'm YoMrWhite. I also made a post in the yes thread and replied to some other random dude.

[rong]

Annoyingly I can't access the justice site on my phone, it just force closes on me, so I'll only be able to view it in the evenings. Was hoping to do the reading in my lunch break but I guess I'm stuck with Memnoch the Devil.

[rong]

Surviva, can you post a direct link to the second document on the reading list, I think its the one about cannibalism that accompanies lecture 2. Hopefully the link will work on my phone.

[surviva316]

https://www.edx.org/c4x/HarvardX/ER2...sm__31-33_.pdf

I doubt that'll work any better, though, 'cause the link is still through the edx site.

[surviva316]

I am currently outlining a term paper. It just so happens that the earliest into a class that I have ever started to write a term paper is for the one humanities class I've ever taken that does not require any papers.

[Pascal]

i just finished a paper, feel like death. this justice course will have to wait/not happen, too much stuff on!

[surviva316]

i just finished a paper, feel like death. this justice course will have to wait/not happen, too much stuff on!

I wouldn't quit the course altogether, just for the simple fact that doing the bare minimum is really really easy. Basically all you have to do is answer 50 multiple choice questions over the course of the year (5 x 5 quiz questions + a 25-question final), and you pass. The discussion and readings and all that are all pretty much optional.

Of course, I think you learn the most from the class if you engage with it actively, but if you're going to be not burnt out any time in the near future, then you don't need to drop the class.

Then, in the distant future (whenever you're feeling good and thoughtful again) you can join in on any arguments that FTRers are having in the discussions, which would be--if not fun--less lame than it has been up until this point, haha.

[rong]

I've not looked at anything since my initial effort. Will have time this weekend.

[surviva316]

Lmao at people wanting to be paid more money to eat an earth worm than to cu off their toe or to strangle a cat with their bare hands.

[surviva316]

The You-Got-Philosophy-Served quote of the day comes from our reading 4 weeks ago.

In response to utilitarianism being likable to the ethics of swine, by reducing all ends down to the pleasure/pain:

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conceptions of happiness.

[rong]

I think the strangle a cat for money needs an ftr poll.

[surviva316]

Only 36 more paragraphs til I'm done Groundwork!!! Yes, I've been counting the paragraphs.

Anyone else still in this course? I plan on taking full advantage of the extension. I got some really awesome reading material for my birthday, so I've been alternating Philosophy and fiction, which helps with the sanity and all.

[surviva316]

BTW, Sandel's question and answer reading on Kant is the best fucking part this course so far (imho). I had been bored with his book for a while, but those were 6 pages of pure gold.