ILX University - first course?

The class that practically pays for itself!

general chemistry b/c I did so awful in it in college

would actually be interested in taking any of these tbh

Science and Cooking (Harvard)
Intro to Hebrew Bible (Yale)
Financial Markets (Yale)
Moral Foundations of Politics (Yale)
Evolution, Ecology and Behavior (Yale)

so basically you're alright w/ anything as long as it's harvard or yale

oops, didn't mean to have a Harvard one on the list. Yale full-stop accept no substitutes!

General chemistry because I failed it twice in college.

i can see how all of these could possibly be interesting (or make me want to fall asleep and/or barf), but what resonates right now are Financial Markets and Moral Foundations of Politics

so this can also be used to suggests ways this can be run...I can 'run' the first class which means we pick a day and I'll post a link to the lecture on that day.

w/ some of these subjects there are people who know enough to answer questions. if you do, it'd be cool if you'd lurk the thread?

These are like podcasts, right? I can put it on my ipod and listen to it/watch it away from a computer?

If it ends up being comp sci I will be happy to TA.

yeah at least for the yale ones I know there are audio-only files

(there are video files too)

the comp sci one has video, audio & transcripts of lectures all avail

i might follow along w/it by myself lol

do these come with syllabi? the lectures are going to lean heavily on the reading I think, but knowing what some famous and respected professor has to say about Locke is probably just as useful as knowing the original text, probably more so

hoos I would join you

I think they all have syllabuses

The Bits course at Harvard is pretty interesting, and might be a better (more fitting?) option than the Intro to CS one . Bits is designed as a non-major perspective on the field, but not dumbed-down, and with heavy doses of theory and application to current events. The Intro to CS course is a prereq for a lot of later coursework, and tends to be a little drier/techier more intended as a gateway to a later CS career. (Says my girlfriend)

is it online?

all i saw on the harvard extended edu site was some excerpts from lectures, but i'd be down for that for sure

I did about 80% of Shiller's financial markets course. It's fascinating at times but parts are hard to understand without the textbook and homework (it's literally just a recording of him teaching his Yale class live). I think it's useful for general concepts if you're willing to just shrug at the techincal parts that you can't really learn without practice problems and such.

Also IIRC there are cool guest speakers, including the guy who manages Yale's endowment, and Carl Icahn (who is very entertaining and firebrandy).

In fact Carl Icahn goes on a tear about how the top executives at most companies are a bunch of idiot frat boys who got where they are by not making any waves.

yale's endowment guy was pretty legendary until he too got hammered in the 07 crash

Well, I mean him getting slammed in the crash like everyone else doesn't really do anything to discredit his methods.

I accidentally had votef for Intro to CS without having read the whole first post. And the class probably wouldn't be as helpful to me as something like intro to SQL. I'd also like to learn more about coding for websites

Here are the free Harvard courses:

http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative

Here's the actual website for Bits:

http://cm.dce.harvard.edu/2011/02/22883/publicationListing.shtml

here's the entire list of MIT open courseware courses:

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

what is wrong with me that i see 'abstract algebra' and go 'ooooo'

i was just thinking that a class in neural plasticity and learning seemed like a good thing to work out to

xps to hurting2, yeah, the class syllabus for Financial Markets oourse (2008) said: "Some facility with elementary algebra and calculus required. Course exams consist of roughly 50% math and theory problems and 50% facts and general understanding questions about financial markets." So i imagine a textbook would be pretty necessary there, i mean, for those of us who haven't done algebra or calculus since we were teenagers... But i'd be into it!

When I worked for Harvard I could take classes at the Extension school for $40 a pop so I did a few lit ones just for the hell of it and they were awesome. I can't praise the extension school enough tbh. Would have done my MA there (almost for free too) if they'd had a course of study I was really interested in.

bragging!

how do i get a job at harvard

maybe you have to wander around the hallways and solve equations for people?

That would prob help.

Job sucked tbh because my boss was a brilliant asshole who was impossible to work with. The tuition remission program was the main reason I took the position in the first place. I was gutted when I realized that they just didn't have the programs I was interested in. The couple classes I did take were pretty cool though.

Extension is wonderful, but too bad some business school grads sued them to make it impossibly hard for students to transfer into the college to finish the degree. I understand it's been really injurious to their completion numbers.

lol. the worst anti-competition stories I've heard about students have all involved b-school students.

A "close friend" of mine will be taking 7+ years to complete a 2 year degree finish b/c the ruling decided that extension students (functionally) can't take classes at the college, and many of the required sequences in the course are only offered in alternate years, and even then at the same time. The Extension - which is 100 years old - has traditionally allowed students to cross-enroll or transfer to the college, but this is no longer an option. Further, full-time extension students - many of whom work during the day - cannot receive ANY financial aid b/c the Federal allotment provided to the university is now forwarded to the "more worthy" schools.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Science and Cooking sounds fascinating, but Financial Markets is necessary.

shiller is prob the best person to learn about financial markets through too, recently reading about him in

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm117185549/myth-rational-market-history-risk-reward-delusion-on-justin-fox-paperback-cover-art.jpg

studied under God of Financial Economics modigliani at mit but was a critic of efficient market theory, prophet of us housing bubble/collapse. feel like disciplinary critique is best when it's coming from someone really entrenched in the theory & intellectual foundations of the discipline rather than people who are like "lol u assume ppl are rational." i'm tempted to take it w yall tho things are really picking up in my classes

I was in new haven recently and he was my celebrity sighting

i sold business cards to howard gardner last year. he was a huge dickhead!

ACADEMIC CELEBRITY SIGHTING THREAD

almost bought myth of the rational market the other day

so did billions of other people amirite?

:D

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

financial markets it is!

dope

ugh

wait - didn't we say we might do a couple at once? can't we do the euro one too?

maybe. when/where do we start this? and how? i'm okay w/ spinning this off onto some barely-used board (or creating a new one?), so that it won't clutter up the main board and we can keep a few different streams contained.