I've now watched a significant portion of Andrew Ng's Stanford Machine Learning course on iTunes U. I have taken several Machine Learning [classroom] courses, I've read many Machine Learning books and technical papers, I've done research on Machine Learning, and I've also taught Machine Learning. In short, I already know all the material in this course; watching it is mostly entertainment and professional curiosity.
And I still find the lectures harder to follow than a simple textbook.
(That's a lecture format problem, not a Andrew Ng problem.) The supplemental materials help, but they are essentially class notes in PDF format. (There are some problem sets, but no affordances for the general audience to get them graded.)
In lieu of, or to complement, this online course, here are a couple of non-interactive Machine Learning textbooks available online -- legally; posted by their authors:
- Introduction to Machine Learning (late 90s Stanford class materials), by Nils Nilsson.
- The Elements of Statistical Learning 2nd Edition (corrected 5th printing), by Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman.
Let me reiterate the golden rule of learning technical material: 1% lecture, 9% study, 90% practice. You still need the textbook (preferably with dynamic content where applicable and programming and testing affordances) and the job of the instructor is crucial (selecting the material, sequencing it, choosing the textbook, designing the assignments, grading the assignments; and someone must write the textbook, of course), but the learning happens when you can WRITE CODE AND INTERPRET RESULTS.
If that's hard on your self-esteem, then tough. Machines don't care.
