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Deadline Approaches For Registration In Stanford's Free CS Classes
First time accepted submitter Gastrobot writes "Stanford University is offering some computer science classes for free. This has been discussed here twice before. The classes begin on Oct. 10th. At this point in time I'm aware of Stanford offering an Intro to Databases course, an Intro to AI course, and a Machine Learning course."
It is an exciting time to be alive. We are discovering planets around stars that people didn't know even existed 50 years ago. We can communicate with people around the world in real-time for free. We have access to information that you would have had to be rich and/or connected to access.
Now we are truly gaining access to knowledge from world class teachers for free. It is a truly amazing time to be alive and I am grateful to be living in this era. Our grandkids will take it for granted... my kids might too. But we are in a true inflection point in history. In a thousand years, people will look at the idea of countires and wars and not understand why they existed. World War II sparked a real change in thinking. The UN was a step toward a world community and world thinking. The internet has provided the techical means for connecting. Other technology has helped bridge the gap.
The vision has been there for a while and we are just beginning to realize that dream. We have growing pains for sure and will for a while... but we are getting there. This Stanford course is just one of the tremendous side effects.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Correction: In many parts of the world, the costs associated with university level educations provided to students are subsidized by those who are not attending university.
Correction: Free education would be something new, since finding a way to provide education without a cost of resources that could be applied elsewhere would be entirely unheard of.
Hmm... as these are fairly early level university courses, I don't think it really matters whether they're accredited or not -- there is no such thing as "an eighth of a degree" or whatever, after all.
However, most CVs have a section for "Education" (School and University) and a section for "Other training and certificates" where you would list any sort of training you did that wasn't part of an accredited academic program -- I would see no problem with listing them there, if they are relevant to the role you're applying for. Remember that one of the buzzwords of our era is "CPD" -- Continual Professional Development. If you show an interest in proactively developing your career, that in itself is appealing to employers.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Im a beginner learning how to program.
would i understand/benefit from the course material from an undeveloped background?
From their webpage:
Programming is not required, however we believe it will be very helpful for some of the homework assignments. You may write code in any language you would like to (we recommend Python if you are new to programming) and your code will not be graded.
So, don't let all these people saying it's too advanced for you discourage you. Try it out, what do you have to lose? Worst case scenario, you don't finish the course and don't get a little certificate that, really, isn't worth anything. Best case scenario, you find you have aptitude for the subject and learn quite a lot.
I signed up for the course on databases, and I see that there are scheduled due dates for homework assignments and exams. This implies that there will be a record of successful completion. What's more, the requirements are more demanding than the online course I'm taking that will give me college credits from an accredited institution.
I know the college I attend has rules for testing to fulfill requirements in lieu of taking a course. I'm hoping that completing this course and demonstrating I know the material through a test will let me complete a certificate I've been working on.
Online education is rapidly becoming more widespread. Employers will have to start acknowledging that people who've taken online courses and can prove they know the material have a valid claim to skill.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." ~Attributed to both Andy McIntyre and Derek Bok
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Sigh, you've missed the entire point of the "Primary Keyvil" articles (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and many similar ones. Let's go through your drivel point by point.
"Student ID" is an acceptable primary key - you will be able to tell if two rows are duplicates based on this alone.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. A surrogate key, like "student ID", actually is an acceptable "primary key" for a table, but only if you have a real way to tell apart your users, something based on an understanding of an answer to the question "what defines a unique student, and how am I going to verify that?".
It's not automatically generated by the database, which is the primary keyvil syndrome.
VERY WRONG! From the database's point of view, and the "primary keyvil" syndrome, it doesn't matter if you fill in the "student ID" using, say, a database function called SYS_GUID(), or whether you generate this GUID on the client side. Read Part 1 of the Primary Keyvil syndrome articles for another example. But let's take our example of a table of students and run with it. You, the database application developer and schema designer, have created a table of students where the only unique key is a "student ID". Let's pretend you're smart, and you only assign new student IDs to new students coming through the gate on admission day. So far, so good, right?
Well, you're sitting in your office when a freshman comes in and says "Hey, I lost my ID. How do I get a new one". Now you're in a tough spot. You could say "what's your student ID number?", and if the student knows it, then you print off a new student ID for him, since you know who he is based on his ID number, right? Uh oh, you've just opened a door to students impersonating other students. But let's ignore that problem for now... what do you do if the poor kid doesn't know his ID number? Well, you ask him..... his name? Right? What if it's "Joe Smith", and you have fifty of those in your giant state school? Uh, I guess you ask him his name, and his street address, right? That's got to be unique, right? Or maybe his current SSN, those can never change, right? And how do you prove that the student in front of you is really who he says he is?
The frantic grasping around in the above paragraph is why you need to have a good answer to the question "what distinguishes a unique student?" before you go designing a table like this. There are several ways to answer this question: in practice, you might enforce unique constraints on (full name + home phone number), or maybe just a unique key on SSN if you're daring. But either way, relying solely on some arbitrary identifier like "Student ID" with no actual anchor in reality opens all sorts of paths to trouble. (Incidentally, the social security administration has the same problem, they've just thought through and been through the consequences. They have elaborate, formal answers to the question "how do we distinguish unique people, regardless of SSN", for scenarios like assigning new SSNs, changing SSNs, replacing lost social security cards to people who don't remember their SSN, etc etc.)
Another major problem I didn't even touch on, is how your model would prevent a user from getting two student IDs, either intentionally or accidentally. If you haven't answered these fundamental questions, you will have a database full of garbage. Kind of like the No Fly List.
It's as unique as it would be to include the students DNA in number form as the primary key.
Privacy concerns aside, DNA would actually be a totally reasonable way to distinguish unique students -- student comes in to your office, you take a cheek swab, and issue him his replacement ID card. (Hrm,
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