Mahout and Stanford Classes

[Joshua Smith]

Sean Owen, Robin Anil, Ted Dunning, and Ellen Friedman, -

There's been a lot of buzz in the last week about the free online Stanford University course on Artificial Intelligence. Currently there are more than 70,000 people signed up for it.
http://www.ai-class.com/

How relevant is their course to the things covered in your book and vice versa?

Also, there is a free course on Machine Learning. Same question there.
http://www.ml-class.com/

Thanks,
Joshua Smith

[Ted Dunning]

The Stanford course is broader and more fundamental than our book. We present hands on practical knowledge, they present lots of theory and are much less judgmental about what works in practice. We don't present everything, by any stretch, but we do present practical methods that do get the job done.

It is probably good to have both.

[Joshua Smith]

Thank you Ted.

Josh

[Sean Owen]

Agree, the book is not a course on machine learning techniques. It explains some of the basics along the way, but is much more about a particular tool (Mahout) and about applying it, than the theory. In that sense these are complementary things.