Tag: Free

Free Machine Learning at Stanford

One of the cornerstones of the technology revolution, Stanford now offers some courses for free via distance learning. One of the more exciting courses is of course- machine learning

 

 

http://jan2012.ml-class.org/

About The Course

This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition. Topics include: (i) Supervised learning (parametric/non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks). (ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning). (iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias/variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI). The course will also draw from numerous case studies and applications, so that you’ll also learn how to apply learning algorithms to building smart robots (perception, control), text understanding (web search, anti-spam), computer vision, medical informatics, audio, database mining, and other areas.

The Instructor

Professor Andrew Ng is Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, the main AI research organization at Stanford, with 20 professors and about 150 students/post docs. At Stanford, he teaches Machine Learning, which with a typical enrollment of 350 Stanford students, is among the most popular classes on campus. His research is primarily on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics, and most universities doing robotics research now do so using a software platform (ROS) from his group.

 

  1. When does the class start?The class will start in January 2012 and will last approximately ten weeks.
  2. What is the format of the class?The class will consist of lecture videos, which are broken into small chunks, usually between eight and twelve minutes each. Some of these may contain integrated quiz questions. There will also be standalone quizzes that are not part of video lectures, and programming assignments.
  3. Will the text of the lectures be available?We hope to transcribe the lectures into text to make them more accessible for those not fluent in English. Stay tuned.
  4. Do I need to watch the lectures live?No. You can watch the lectures at your leisure.
  5. Can online students ask questions and/or contact the professor?Yes, but not directly There is a Q&A forum in which students rank questions and answers, so that the most important questions and the best answers bubble to the top. Teaching staff will monitor these forums, so that important questions not answered by other students can be addressed.
  6. Will other Stanford resources be available to online students?No.
  7. How much programming background is needed for the course?The course includes programming assignments and some programming background will be helpful.
  8. Do I need to buy a textbook for the course?No.
  9. How much does it cost to take the course?Nothing: it’s free!
  10. Will I get university credit for taking this course?No.Interested in learning machine learning-

    Well here is the website to enroll http://jan2012.ml-class.org/

YouTube Boxoffice for Bollywood Fans

While Hulu.com continues to be only-America centric (and so does Spotify), Youtube continues to have the best global strategy for media partnerships. I just came across http://www.youtube.com/BoxOffice and it shows the latest Bollywood movies for free (by streaming and by ads- it is sponsored by Intel 🙂  )

 

If you wanted to watch Bollywood and dont want to spend too much (or more likely- dont have a Bollywood rental store near you) -Check out the following movies some very new and some very classic-

Continue reading “YouTube Boxoffice for Bollywood Fans”

What are you thankful for?

I am thankful for-1) God and Jesus Christ and Rama and Allah and Buddha and their priests and intermediaries and everybody taking care of me. or atleast trying hard to take care of me.2) Earth my planet for nourishing me despite me polluting her, her fresh air and her delicious fruit and marvellous wine and hearty bread.

3) Fellow Human Beings for being nice to me when they feel curt, for displaying civilized manners, and working together in a vast invisible web of commerce, trade and exchange to meet our needs.

4) Scientists and Engineers who create wonderful technology by spending hours , months , years of their lives and giving it up for free on the Internet.

5) Powerful people who take time to mentor unknown wild cards, and young people to rejuvenate with new exciting ideas.

6) people who appreciate my poetry and people who appreciate my technology. and people who criticize only in the intention of me striving to create something better.

Continue reading “What are you thankful for?”

Product Review – Revolution R 5.0

So I got the email from Revolution R. Version 5.0 is ready for download, and unlike half hearted attempts by many software companies they make it easy for the academics and researchers to get their free copy. Free as in speech and free as in beer.

Some thoughts-

1) R ‘s memory problem is now an issue of marketing and branding. Revolution Analytics has definitely bridged this gap technically  beautifully and I quote from their documentation-

The primary advantage 64-bit architectures bring to R is an increase in the amount of memory available to a given R process.
The first benefit of that increase is an increase in the size of data objects you can create. For example, on most 32-bit versions of R, the largest data object you can create is roughly 3GB; attempts to create 4GB objects result in errors with the message “cannot allocate vector of length xxxx.”
On 64-bit versions of R, you can generally create larger data objects, up to R’s current hard limit of 231 􀀀 1 elements in a vector (about 2 billion elements). The functions memory.size and memory.limit help you manage the memory used byWindows versions of R.
In 64-bit Revolution R Enterprise, R sets the memory limit by default to the amount of physical RAM minus half a gigabyte, so that, for example, on a machine with 8GB of RAM, the default memory limit is 7.5GB:

2) The User Interface is best shown as below or at  https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1V_G7r0aBR3I5SktSOenhnhuqkHThne6fMxly_-4i8Ag&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

-(but I am still hoping for the GUI ,Revolution Analytics promised us for Christmas)

3) The partnership with Microsoft HPC is quite awesome given Microsoft’s track record in enterprise software penetration

but I am also interested in knowing more about the Oracle version of R and what it will do there.

Google Chrome introduces in-browser ads

Just saw a text ad on my chrome browser. Not a website just the browser.

Text ads courtesy Google Chrome.

No matter what website you go- well who has the browser can show you ads. I am glad the decade long stint of browsers as a sink hole for free stuff is going to go away soon.

Hmm.

Now if Microsoft comes up with in-Desktop Ads and slices the prices it would be fun.

Holiday season starts early!

 

 

Free online education by Stanford and MIT

One more reason American education is the best in the world- it has a big heart.

Stanford just announced free courses starting from Jan 2012- and they are online (so no visa blues) and free( as in speech and free as in beer) and just the same as actual courses (yes , the homework will have to be done, and the dog cannot eat the homework)

http://www.venture-class.org/

MIT meanwhile has 2000 courses  at http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

 

– but I liked Stanford’s minimal , clutter free interface ( I read Steve Jobs biography- the interface hangover continues).

Hurrah for Stanford!

MIT needs to DESIGN  their free online courses website and maybe do more search engine optimization at

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/.

 

Movie Review- Bollywood "Rock Star"

This one is a wee bit different. The music sounds more contemporary and fusion ,East blends West, the direction is both subtle and at times flamboyant, and the acting is notches above the average dance round the tree, laugh like a idiot fare.

Rock Star is the tale of a college dropout (aint they all!) called Jordan / by Ranbir Kapoor  musical prodigy who battles personal demons, lady luck , lady love (in the impossible pout of the American fashion model ,Nargis F), and his own musical ambitions. The breathtaking art moves from Kashmir, Prague, Europe and the streets of Delhi University. This one is a taker, breaker, soul shaker.  Try getting a sub titled DVD if you dont know Hindi, or atleast dekko some songs streaming free at http://www.saavn.com/search/hindi/album%20Rockstar

Imitiaz Ali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imtiaz_Ali_(director) does all olde Hindu College alumni proud (including this reviewer)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/cn1jx_JUpi0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0