Coursera -- Finance Courses

I’m always trying to learn and found a new website being started by an organization partnering with top schools to offer free web based courses.

https://www.coursera.org

There are some finance ones, so figured I’d share in case anyone is interested:

  • Computational Investing by Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Princples of Obesity Economics by John Hopkins
  • Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics by University of Washington
  • Game Theory by Stanford University
  • Data Analysis by John Hopkins
  • Financial Engineering and Risk Management by Columbia
  • A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior by Duke
    I’m enrolled in a few of these. Figured I’d give it a shot and if I don’t like it, there is no commitment.

rawraw, thanks for posting. I signed up for Intro to Comp Finance. It says the course only starts on Dec 17. What’s the format of this course exactly? Why aren’t the videos all available to watch now (i.e. why not have posted videos from last year)? Is there actual interaction available with tutors, etc?

edit - apologies if this info was available on the site. I had a quick look through the options but couldn’t find any info on what’s actually available with these courses. Intro video for the course also didn’t work.

When classes end, the videos are removed after a certain time period. It functions like a regular class, you have lectures that are posted at scheduled times each week. Most of the classes have a forum for interaction with other students and professors. You get homework and tests (which of course are optional) at assigned intervals and can complete and submit.

My impression is that some or most of these classes are actual classes being hosted at the universities. So you only get the lecture as it happens, just like in college.

How to Reason and Argue is on the site and has the largest enrollment to date. I signed up for it so I can be more like BChad. It went live today

Very cool. Thanks for posting rawraw

Great. Thanks for the head-up

I took data analysis at John Hopkins, it’s really about programming in R. The class doesn’t given enough background info to successfully pass without a good amount of previous experience with R. I’d be willing to bet that less than 5% of the people passed (I didn’t complete the course). There were tons of complaints on the messageboard about the instructor and the fact that it’s a 4 week class, the programming assignments were the biggest obstacle for most.

Anyways, I ordered a couple of books on Amazon to complete he education I don’t receive.

im gonna sign up for a few classes. can anyone share their experience with coursera.

can the lectures be viewed on demand? how do the quizes/tests work?

any other comments appreciated!

What if the course started a day /couple of days back. can we still enrol?

GT shoutout!

Great stuff. Thanks for the post. Some of these definitely look really interesting, both for new knowledge, and for catching up on improvements in the field since I learned stuff.

Also, rawraw, that was one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. Thank you.

chad here is a review site for coursera offerings

http://www.coursetalk.com/coursera

hope someone on AF has more insight, unless no one took it =/

also do the certificates of completion that you have option to pay for mean anything?

@igor555 I had taken John Cochrane’s Asset Pricing on Coursera last year, but it is too high level and not practical enough for me so I gave up. I like the site, but many professors are not used to it and it will take time to be great.

I think that certificates of completion don’t really mean anything now, but who knows about the future. I did see that there were John Hopkins classes that required you to pay to take them.

I just signed up for the Washington Data Science class.

For something similar to coursera, there is also www.edx.org

RR, this is great stuff. Do you know if they offer language classes too?

is edx better?

btw i signed up for “go from back office to front office after passing level III sucker” course is being offered by itera

I thought RR was reserved only for THE rahul roy.

^ Agreed, he has the trademark. Rawraw should be Raw ^ 2

Unless they have a course in stochastic calculus, what’s the point?