Coursera Review: Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will.

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org

Today: Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will by Valerio Scarani from National University of Singapore.


1. What is the course about?

The course introduces the interface between modern Science (in particular Physics) and Philosophy with respect to topics around randomness, chance, and (un-)predictability. 

The course includes video lecturing, discussion groups and test quizzes.

Level: (Very) basic knowledge on quantum physics is helpful, although not a hard prerequisite; difficulty is like for 2nd or year undergraduate.

2. Who should use it?

2.1. University students in scientific disciplines like Physics as well as students with more humanitarian majors like Philosophy.

3. Who should NOT use it?

3.1. Students who do not like to cross boundaries between subjects and would prefer to stay focused on their classical major studies.

4. What is the best thing about this course?

It gives a unique perspective over a topic that is quite technical and at the same time very philosophically oriented.

5. What is the worst thing about this course?

Students who expect deeper information and more intellectually challenging content might be disappointed. The course is intended to be an introduction, and often ends by just providing links and hints for further resources.

Coursera Review part 0

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org

1. What is coursera?

A on-line learning platform of a company founded by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University. It offers on-line university-level courses in engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, and other areas.

The courses include video lecturing, discussion groups, test quizzes, programming assignments and sometimes peer-reviewed test cases. The courses are delivered professors from by leading universities. For students successfully passing the assignments, an informal certificate is issued by coursera.

Similar platforms include: EdX,  Stanford Venture Labs, Udacity, Khan Academy, and MIT Open Courseware.

2. Who should use it?

2.1. University students who wish to enhance their education, in particular in cases in which the student does not have the opportunity to get comparable high-quality course at his home institution.

2.2. Working professionals seeking a more mentally beneficial way to relax (in other words, an alternative to sweating in a gym or some other sport, which is also my personal motivation).

2.3. People looking for a potential career change, but uncertain about the direction which they would like to take (back-to-college attitude).

3. Who should NOT use it?

3.1. Self-learners should be careful not to place their entire plans on Coursera. Coursera cannot replace a college / university education.

3.2. People looking for purely career-enhancing options should avoid coursera at all. First, coursera offers academic courses, meaning that in the usual case only a very small fraction of what you learn will ever come in a real application. It's NOT a place for hand-on, vocational-type training! Second, the certificates issued by the platform are really silly, including all of the paid alternatives around it.

3.3. People who have difficulties in learning independently, without high degree of personal interactions.

4. What is the best thing about coursera?

It's free, high quality education!

5. What is the worst thing about coursera?

It is difficult to compose an equivalent of a bachelor degree in, say, computer science, by taking the courses offered solely on the platform (at the very least, people who are self-learning should try multiple platforms). At a graduate level, the courses offered are basically 'self-contained' for 6 to 10 weeks, which means that they cannot cover a topic in the necessary depth, but rather should be viewed as 'introductions'.

6. Would I hire somebody because he did courses at coursera?

It depends. If he is just posing with 'certificates', I would easily sort him out. If she has taken some really challenging courses there as a way of self-improvement, I would consider that a big advantage.

7. What are the best courses to take?

I guess most of the courses are excellent. I will review these in detail:
1. Foundations of Business Strategy (University of Virginia).
2. Financial Engineering and Risk Management (Columbia University).
3. Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics (Washington University)
4. Natural Language Processing (Columbia University)
5. Probabilistic Graphical Models (Stanford)
6. Start-up Engineering
7. Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will (NU of Singapore).
... more to follow.
 

Coursera review: Probabilistic Graphical Models

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org

Today: Probabilistic Graphical Models by DaphneKoller from Stanford University.


1. What is the course about?

Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) is a framework of mathematical models. It spans methods such as Bayesian networks, Markov random fields, coding theory, and discrete data structures in used in modern computer science. The goal is to efficiently encode and manipulate high-dimensional probability distributions, often involving thousands of variables. These methods have been used in a wide range of applications, like: web search, medical and fault diagnosis, image understanding, reconstruction of biological networks, speech recognition, natural language processing, decoding of messages sent over a noisy communication channel, robot navigation, and many more.

The course includes video lecturing, discussion groups, test quizzes, final exam, and programming assignments. The programming assignments are needed only for students who wish to follow the 'advanced track'.

Level: graduate.

2. Who should use it?

People with very strong background in technical disciplines like mathematics, computer science or engineering. Students who are interested in understanding and building large-scale data analysis applications in complex, multidimensional environments.
 
3. Who should NOT use it?

Students with limited experience in algorithms and/or without strong technical background (including high-level math skills, not just programming).

4. What is the best thing about this course?

Excellent lecturer who explains clearly pretty complex notions through carefully selected examples. Presented are many links to real-world applications. Unlike other courses on coursera, this one is not 'watered down'.

5. What is the worst thing about this course?

The course claims that 'the average Stanford student needs between 15 and 20 hours of work per week to complete the course'. This might be true for some students. In my personal experience this statement was exaggerated, but nevertheless I needed about 7h/week (60% of which was spend on the programming assignments for the advanced track). For a working professional this might be too much.

Coursera review: Natural Language Processing

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org


Today: Natural Language Processing by Michael Collins from Columbia University.



1. What is the course about?

The course gives an introduction to the various types of modern statistical models used in natural language processing, including tagging, named entity recognition and machine translation. 

The course includes video lecturing, discussion groups, test quizzes and programming assignments.


Level: 4th year undergraduate or 1st year graduate.


2. Who should use it?

2.1. University students in technical disciplines like mathematics, computer science or engineering.

2.2. Working professionals with strong quantitative background as a form of relaxation.

3. Who should NOT use it?

3.1. Students with limited experience in programming, little interest in algorithms and/or without strong technical background.

4. What is the best thing about this course?

Interesting and challenging programming assignments, which help the student to understand clearly the theory. Excellent lecturer!

5. What is the worst thing about this course?

It might turn out to be time-consuming, in particular for people who have never been exposed to related topics like machine learning / AI.

Coursera review: computational finance and financial econometrics

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org


Today: Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics by Eric Zivot from University of Washington.



1. What is the course about?

The course gives an introduction to computational finance methods, mainly related to stock market investments.

The course includes video lecturing, discussion groups, test quizzes, programming assignments and a final exam (test quiz).


Level: 3rd year undergraduate.


2. Who should use it?

2.1. University students, in particular in technical disciplines like mathematics, computer science or engineering.

2.2. Working professionals in the finance sector or talented financial journalists as a form of relaxation.

3. Who should NOT use it?

3.1. Day-traders, chartists and any other dreamers thinking that the course would have any relevance to their investment strategies.

3.2. People who think that the course might have a significant impact on their career, both as a certification and as a know-how-set.

4. What is the best thing about this course?

You get exposed to R, the most powerful language for statistical data modelling.

5. What is the worst thing about this course?

The quality of video lectures is below the coursera standard. The first half of the course if absolutely boring for anybody with statistics knowledge. Overall, for industry professionals the course is easy to an extend that kills all pleasure of taking it. 

Coursera Review: Financial Engineering and Risk Management

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org


Today: Financial Engineering and Risk Management  by Martin Haugh, Garud Iyengar, Emanuel Derman from Columbia University.



1. What is the course about?

The course gives an introduction to financial engineering, mainly with respect to valuation of derivatives in a binomial model framework.

The course includes video lecturing, discussion groups and test quizzes.


Level: 4th year undergraduate or 1st year graduate.


2. Who should use it?

2.1. University students, in particular in technical disciplines like mathematics, computer science or engineering.

2.2. Working professionals in the finance sector or talented financial journalists as a form of relaxation.

3. Who should NOT use it?

3.1. Day-traders, chartists and any other dreamers thinking that the course would have any relevance to their investment strategies.

3.2. People who think that the course might have a significant impact on their career, both as a certification and as a know-how-set.

4. What is the best thing about this course?

During the quizzes you will develop a nice set of Excel sheets illustrating the main concepts of derivative valuation. Excellent lecturers with practical insight!

5. What is the worst thing about this course?

It is too lightweight for people with knowledge in risk management. At the same time it's too heavy-weight for people who see the topic for first time.

Coursera Review: Foundations of Business Strategy

In this series of posts, I will share some experiences from the on-line learning platform coursera.org


Today: Foundations of Business Strategy by prof. Michael J. Lenox from Virginia University / Darden School of Business.



1. What is the course about?

The course gives a basic tool-set for analysis of competitive positioning of a firm.

The course includes video lecturing, discussion groups, test quizzes, and a peer-reviewed final project (3-15 pages analysis of the competitive position of a firm, chosen, researched and written by each student).


Level: 2nd or 3rd year undergraduate.




2. Who should use it?

2.1. University students, in particular in disciplines like business administration or economics, but also as an enhancement to any other major.

2.2. Working professionals as a form of relaxation.

2.3. People being at or considering moving to any level management position, starting from product management up to the CxO level.

3. Who should NOT use it?

3.1. Entrepreneurs doing or planning to do a start-up might find it less useful for their purposes.

3.2. People who think that the course might have a significant impact on their career, both as a certification and as a know-how-set.

4. What is the best thing about this course?

It introduces a nice set of fairly visual tools which might be helpful for a presentation at management level. Experienced lecturer!

5. What is the worst thing about this course?


It touches very briefly upon interesting topics from macro-economics (e.g. Ricardian economics in the context of competitiveness) but unfortunately does not go into the necessary detail. As a mathematician I was so sorry to see a meaningful plot demonstrating some macroeconomic equilibrium shown for a few minutes and disappearing without being properly defined and explained.

Bad times to have LinkedIn profile (Part 3)

In the previous post we saw that LinkedIn (and other similar social networks) could become zombies of your time and personal space, unless you dedicate time & efforts to select and configure the available options according to your preferences.

Let me first state that I like professional social networks like LinkedIn. I am now 33 and I do not really remember if I have ever applied for a job off-line. Many times, the initial contact for a successful job application or freelancer contract was through my LinkedIn or Monster profiles. I remember when I joined LinkedIn for first time they had to add my country of origin, Bulgaria, to their country list.

Having said that, there were some really bad times when I wished my Internet footprint was smaller.

3. Destructive information


Let's face it, it is very easy to put destructive information on your profile. I am not talking about silly blunders like selecting a 'I could drink 2 Liters rakia' picture for your profile. These are clear and can be easily avoided (although I must say I had such a picture live for a while before noticing :)).

Here is an example for a hard-to-notice destructive information from personal experience.

Recently I took a long vacation from my regular job. I wanted to work on some personal projects. My start-up, universalowner.com, was one of these projects. In order to promote the project, I put a new job line 'Founder of universalowner.com' on my profile. I did not notice that by doing so I have automatically moved my regular employer to the 'past jobs' section.

This had some undesirable consequences. Clients of my regular employer immediately spotted that. They questioned the financial and organizational integrity of my employer. The management hat to explain if why and how they are loosing a key employee.  

Before changing my LinkedIn profile, my colleagues contacted me from time to time for some urgent questions and support requests. This was actually quite desirable, as I had arranged for a way to get compensated for the extraordinary support during my vacation. This activity ceased shortly after the change of my profile.

Here is my summary for the series 'Bad times to have LinkedIn profile'.

1. If you are trying to go into a new professional area, LinkedIn makes the issue of the cat chasing its tail even worse

2. In order to save your personal time and space from web zombies, you need to dedicate time & effort to configure your social network profiles and LinkedIn options.

3. A simple change of the information on your profile could trigger destructive consequences, including damaging the reputation of your employer and reducing your opportunities to advance in your career or earn extra money.

Bad times to have LinkedIn profile (part 2)

In the previous post we saw that LinkedIn makes the problem of the cat chasing its tail even worse. As a remedy I suggested to use as actively as possible the social networking capabilities which LinkedIn and similar sites bring. However, there is an issue here as well.

Let me first state that I like professional social networks like LinkedIn. I am now 33 and I do not really remember if I have ever applied for a job off-line. Many times, the initial contact for a successful job application or freelancer contract was through my LinkedIn or Monster profiles. I remember when I joined LinkedIn for first time they had to add my country of origin, Bulgaria, to their country list.

Having said that, there were some really bad times when I wished my Internet footprint was smaller.

2. Zombie profiles, contacts and groups


When you create a professional profile somewhere, you do it because you want this profile to be seen by relevant people, like recruiters, headhunters, potential allies, partners or clients. The list of relevant people typically does not include the mother of the founder of the 'disruptively different' new social network which has somehow managed to grab your attention. Nowadays, quite a lot of people try to launch something in the area, lured by the success of social networks like LinkedIn. Multiple web-sites offering professional networking around a specific group like university alumni, risk managers,  readers of a specific journal and so on pop up like mushrooms after rain. Any interaction you have with these sites creates zombie profiles of you.

To check that my claim is true, simply go to one of the many web-site featuring start-up co-founder match-making. There create a profile stating that you have all the great hype tech skills and that you are looking for an idea to start a business. Within days you will be flooded by mails and messages from 'business guys', mostly MBAs, many having 'disruptive idea in the social networking space' desperately looking for technical co-founder. About 10-15% of these will be about a LinkedIn cat-copies in some specialized space. About 100% will never get any traction.

Within LinkedIn itself, there are numerous groups on any possible topic you can think of (if you discover a new topic you can create a group about it :)). Many of these are not too much different from the silly start-ups above. The only difference is that they use an already established platform to launch. Finally, many of the people with 500+ connections are again roughly in the same category.

Any interaction you have with such a web site, group or person creates a zombie profile of you in the web. Zombies can go out of control. I have already lost an e-mail account to zombies. 7-8 years ago, I was very careless about the zombie topic. I used to add information for my professional achievements whenever I found  free space. Within 1 year, my e-mail account was flooded and within 2 years it became unusable. There was just too much pouring every day into it. A small part of that was useful. Another big part was just some irritating newsletters. Another part was pure rubbish, most likely resulting from my e-mail address being disclosed to spammers. It was not possible to filter anymore, so I decided to radically change my e-mail account. Informing all useful connections about my new e-mail address was a huge task, though. I bet I have lost somebody in the process.

My career advice: if you want to benefit from professional social networks, that's fine. However, you need to invest enough time to select the relevant web sites, groups and contacts for you. This is especially true for LinkedIn where you really need to think how to configure all the different options around your profile, groups and connections.

Bad times to have LinkedIn profile....

...or any other professional social network profile.

To start with, I like professional social networks like LinkedIn. I am now 33 and I do not really remember if I have ever applied for a job off-line. Many times, the initial contact for a successful job application or freelancer contract was through my LinkedIn or Monster profiles. I remember when I joined LinkedIn for first time they had to add my country of origin, Bulgaria, to their country list.

Having said that, there were some really bad times when I wished my Internet footprint was smaller.

1. The cat chases its tail? Not so easy to overcome as it used to be. Or?

Let us face it: everybody has experienced 'the cat chases its tail' phenomenon when applying for jobs. It is when you come upon a position which seems like an excellent fit for your ambitions. You say to yourself this is exactly where you want to go. The problem is, the potential employer requires that you already have several years of relevant experience to get the position. In fact, all potential employers offering something in the area have this same requirement. So, in order to get experience, you need experience. The cat chases its tail.

A good old-fashioned method to overcome this obstacle was CV boosting. You just need to take your real experience and rephrase it to make it sound relevant for the specific position you are applying.  Remember, the first scan of your CV will be done by somebody form HR who does not really have an idea about what the job is. So, the purpose of your CV is to pass this scanning.

For example, years ago I wanted to apply for a position in the area of financial risk management software implementation at an insurance company. My work experience was however at implementing accounting and inventory management software for small-size, mostly consumer goods trade companies. I have worked however occasionally for a client that was an insurance company; they were managing their office supplies with our software. So I wrote something like

Company ABC: software provider (3 years)
-- implemented the software solution of ABC, focusing in particular on the financial and data management modules
-- trained the employees at one of the top-4 insurance companies in my country to use efficiently the solution
-- minimized project risk by applying......


There was no lying, but strictly speaking what I wrote could be easily misinterpreted. Normally a well-boosted CV is enough to pass the basic screening of a busy HR person. Unluckily, directly after the basic screening they will google your name and check your LinkedIn profile. Hopefully you have updated the profile there to reflect your goals. If not then your CV-boosting was unnecessary waste of time, and the cat can keep on chasing its tail.

Here are some solutions:

A: Limit your on-line profile to a few key facts. Advantage: it will not show an obvious problem by comparison with the boosted version of your CV. Disadvantage: you reduce the chances to appear in search and to get found by a headhunter. Your profile contains little valuable information and therefore you cannot promote it through your blog or other social networking tools.

B: Focus your on-line profile to the position you want to get to. Advantage: it will fit your boosted CV. You increase your chances to be found by a relevant headhunter. Disadvantage: most of the time people are not really sure where they want to go. Among several options, how to choose the one towards which I should boost my profile? Finally, focusing your profile on a new direction could actually harm your career chances, especially if the focus you have chosen turns out to be wrong.

C: Be strictly true and compensate by networking. While LinkedIn and other social networks limit your chances to go ahead by simple CV-boosting, they give you also invaluable opportunities to network and connect. Most people appreciate when somebody asks them for a personal career advice. Participating in groups and discussions increases both your knowledge on a specific area of interest and opens up new possibilities to connect. The list goes on; and the net effect of networking is significantly higher than the effect of passing a first scan towards a dream job with a boosted CV. 

Next time, we will look at the zombie profile problem.