<story><title>New Data Science Certificate Program</title><url>http://datascience101.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/new-data-science-certificate-program/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eykanal</author><text>Why is this the top link on HN? There are already numerous courses available that will allow you to learn this stuff for free from very highly ranked universities, including Stanford [1] and CMU [2], among others. This will just teach you similar things while also taking your money and giving you a &quot;certificate&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I guess if you want to enter a new field and you need to have some certifiable expertise, this &lt;i&gt;may&lt;/i&gt; be a good option. That being said, if the field you plan on entering really does require some documented education, having this certificate will not even put you in the same playing field as those with actual degrees in the field, not to mention those with advanced degrees.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/10701_sp11/lectures.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/10701_sp11/lectures.shtml&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dbecker</author><text>The Coursera courses are excellent, but Coursera, Udacity, CMU, etc. are offering a different set of courses than the UW progam. For instance, I don&apos;t think any of the current players are offering Hadoop courses... In general, it looks like the UW program is more technology-specific and applied than the other programs.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I&apos;d prefer the less technology-specific topics already on offer.  But, my employer would be much more likely to hire someone with UW&apos;s course-mix.  So, there should be some demand for that.&lt;p&gt;And, if we are talking about a career decision, $3,000 is small potatoes compared to the value of getting the right topics.</text></comment>
<story><title>New Data Science Certificate Program</title><url>http://datascience101.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/new-data-science-certificate-program/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eykanal</author><text>Why is this the top link on HN? There are already numerous courses available that will allow you to learn this stuff for free from very highly ranked universities, including Stanford [1] and CMU [2], among others. This will just teach you similar things while also taking your money and giving you a &quot;certificate&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I guess if you want to enter a new field and you need to have some certifiable expertise, this &lt;i&gt;may&lt;/i&gt; be a good option. That being said, if the field you plan on entering really does require some documented education, having this certificate will not even put you in the same playing field as those with actual degrees in the field, not to mention those with advanced degrees.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.coursera.org/course/ml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/10701_sp11/lectures.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/10701_sp11/lectures.shtml&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dundun</author><text>BigDataUniversity (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bigdatauniversity.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bigdatauniversity.com/&lt;/a&gt;) also has  free courses and cover hadoop and some other stuff.&lt;p&gt;The site appears to be push sponsor products and don&apos;t really talk about alternatives. Expect to see lots of endorsements of IBM products.</text></comment>