100,000+ Sign Up For Stanford’s Open Class on Artificial Intelligence.

http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/18/100000-sign-up-for-stanfords-open-class-on-artificial-intelligence-classes-with-1-million-next/

by ph0rque • 15 years ago

64 26 15 years ago

singularityhub.com

earl2• 15 years ago

Damn. AI 3rd ed on amazon is $115. Assume the authors get $50 so Norvig gets $25. He may have just banked $2.5MM.

No disrespect meant -- it's awesome to see Stanford experimenting with education like this. But still... wow.

Edit: reminds me of the $24MM house Stewart -- of Stewart's calculus -- built with earnings from his calc texts [1]. I'm not hating on educators being paid well, but particularly stewart seems a little... unseemly, particularly in light of the constant churn of new editions. Has calculus or calculus pedagogy seriously changed in the last 10 years in a way that requires a stream of new calc book editions?

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html#proj...

inconditus• 15 years ago

It should be noted that on the class page it states that a book is not necessary. Also, the 2nd edition is similar to the third.

patio112• 15 years ago

They won't sell a thousand text books, though.

esrauch• 15 years ago

They might sell a thousand (then he would get $25k) but the certainly won't sell anywhere near 100k.

I doubt more than 1 in 10 will even do two assignments.

waterlesscloud• 15 years ago

From the class page - "Peter Norvig is co-author of this text and is donating all royalties earned from his text to charity."

earl2• 15 years ago

Thank you for pointing that out.

jcnnghm• 15 years ago

In fairness to Stewart, his calculus book is actually pretty awesome. I had a class that used another book, written by one of the professors, and went out and bought another copy of Stewart's book because I could actually follow it. He does a very good job of explaining something that can be difficult. Trying to learn from a poorly constructed book really increased my respect for the quality of Stewart's explanations. There is a very good reason that his book is so well used.

impendia2• 15 years ago

> Has calculus or calculus pedagogy seriously changed in the last 10 years in a way that requires a stream of new calc book editions?

Speaking as a math prof: No. No. NO. It is a ripoff of our students, pure and simple.

When teaching calculus at a previous job we used the eighth edition of this calculus book by Varberg et al., and the statement of Taylor's theorem (one of the major theorems of calculus) was wrong. You figure, eight editions, you could get it right. But evidently I was naive.

However, a couple of universities I have taught at have explicitly told publishers that if they go to a new edition, and stop selling the old one, then the department will move to a different book entirely. I've finally moved up to a tenure track job; I'm going to enjoy this game of hardball :)

plinkplonk• 15 years ago

"Speaking as a math prof: No. No. NO. It is a ripoff of our students, pure and simple."

As a math prof, which texts(old or new) do you think are good? (fwiw I like Spivak)

melling• 15 years ago

In America people shouldn't be able to get rich selling education? I guess we're ok with movie stars, athletes, and rock stars making crazy money but it just doesn't seem right that educators can make their fortune? Maybe we should encourage them to move into finance if they really want to make lots of money?

bugsy• 15 years ago

This is your conclusion from reading about a class at the top university in the US offering completely free courses from renowned experts to anyone in the world who wishes to sign up? They are greedy bastards getting rich? That is really what you conclude from this story. Amazing.

onedognight• 15 years ago

> AI 3rd ed on amazon is $115. Assume the authors get $50 so Norvig gets $25. He may have just banked $2.5MM.

I suspect their deal is not so sweet with publishers. The professors I knew only got $1-$2 on $75 book.

radiowave• 15 years ago

It should be noted that outside the US, the international 3rd edition of the book (supposedly containing some undisclosed differences) can be had much cheaper. I bought a new copy from a seller in Malaysia back in April for about $50 USD.

kennywinker• 15 years ago

How is this new? The stanford iPhone course (http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/) has been downloaded more than a million times.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/may20/million-052009.html

tryitnow• 15 years ago

Is the Stanford iphone class interactive? It seems like something you just download and watch.

MaxGabriel• 15 years ago

It is not

rodh2572• 15 years ago

I believe you actually submit assignments etc for this. It's not just a recording you passively watch.

axiom• 15 years ago

If I'm not mistaken all people did was sign up for a mailing list to receive updates about the course.

briggers• 15 years ago

Exactly. Very few of these people will actually listen to the first lecture, and very few of those people will put in the work to complete the course and master the material.

benmlang• 15 years ago

That's the future of education. Udemy is going to rock it.

polymind• 15 years ago

wow..This is unbelievable. This clearly shows how much progress we are making in terms of the way we are getting educated. Thanks Stanford.

rodh2572• 15 years ago

I'd be interested to see stats of how many people actually finish it. Seeing as its free its easy to say 'yeah ill do it' and then not find the time.

100,000+ Sign Up For Stanford’s Open Class on Artificial Intelligence.

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