[HN Gopher] Show HN: Interactive course about "everyday" data sc...
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Show HN: Interactive course about "everyday" data science
Last year, I wrote the book Everyday Data Science. It was #1 on HN!
[1] This year, I've been working with Jim Fisher on a new kind of
interactive course. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure, except
you'll learn Thompson sampling, differential equations, and
Bayesian-optimal pricing. After several months, the first two
chapters are ready! Every word, button, and sound has been
painstakingly crafted. Try out the first chapter to see what we
mean! [2] The course will be $99, but it's $29 today, as a thanks
for helping us build the next 8 chapters! Let us know what you
think :-) - Andrew Carr [3] [1]:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253281 [2]:
https://tigyog.app/d/L:X07z8laLyz/r/when-life-gives-you-lemo...
[3]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr
Author : andrewnc
Score : 131 points
Date : 2022-07-16 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tigyog.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (tigyog.app)
| pella wrote:
| meta question:
|
| Expecting this post is an "A/B Testing"
|
| Q: Which group am I actually in now? Is this group "A" or "B" ?
|
| :-)
| andrewnc wrote:
| Ha!! Great question, so this is our fourth round of message
| testing. We didn't want to A/B directly on HN cause that feels
| kinda disingenuous, but we've definitely been crunching
| conversion rates and such.
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Haha!! Excellent question. So this is our fourth round of
| testing messages. We didn't want to A/B on HN cause that kinda
| feels disingenuous! But we've definitely been crunching things
| like conversion rates.
|
| (Edit: this comment is a stupid meta-meta-joke, please ignore
| :-)
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Was "Excellent" or "Great" group A?
|
| Exit: oh... that was the joke. I thought I was clever
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Yes, one of those was group A
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Everyday Data Science is the first course on TigYog [1], a
| platform I'm building. Most courses are video-based, but TigYog
| courses are more like books. The only addition is multiple-choice
| buttons with responses. This lets you simulate the tight feedback
| loop you'd have with a private tutor.
|
| Andrew's writing shows off what you can make with this medium.
| It's a bit like blogging. Try it out and let me know how it goes!
| (Currently it's a WYSIWYG editor, though I'm also working on a
| Markdown+git interface. Let me know if you're interested.)
|
| - Jim Fisher [2]
|
| P.S.: Thanks to one user reporting an Apple Pay UI glitch. I'm on
| it! In the meantime, ordinary Stripe card payment should work.
|
| [1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/
| lagrange77 wrote:
| > [1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/
|
| I like your style!
| MathYouF wrote:
| I've tended to observe an inverse correlation between how
| much/early in their pitch someone discusses their credentials
| when selling a product (or their own labor) rather than purely
| focusing on the merits of the product (or technical approach to
| problems their labor may be assisting with) and the actual
| revealed quality of that thing later.
|
| Maybe someone listing their credentials also just rubs me the
| wrong way, as it feels like an attempt by them to subvert
| meritocracy by trying to gain compound interest on good fortune
| by improving social perception, when supposedly having those
| credentials in the first place ought to have already given them a
| sufficient leg up in terms of real ability (that's why one
| mentions the credential after all, to imply it imparted on them
| or signals of them real ability, so why not just show that
| directly?).
|
| Anyway, the sleezy feeling the high pressure sales technique gave
| also contributed to a general disinterest in a product I'd
| otherwise be very receptive to.
|
| I'd enjoy hearing some concrete discussion of what unique vision
| you have for improving the intuition of people trying to do data
| science, and how this helps humanity, and your journey beyond A/B
| testing marketing techniques.
|
| Aside: Since people coming to this thread are likely interested
| in building unconventional ML intuition, and it is a topic dear
| to me, I thought I'd share some resources.
|
| https://distill.pub/
|
| https://colah.github.io/
|
| WandB's Entire Math for ML Series: https://youtu.be/uZeDTwWcnuY
|
| Visual Intuition for NLP: http://jalammar.github.io/
| [deleted]
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Your comment comes off bitter. You could just provide
| additional links for those interested, and/or not read/buy the
| course if you're not interested. Whatever is upsetting you is
| not this.
| MathYouF wrote:
| I am indeed bitter (def: anger and disappointment at being
| treated unfairly; resentment) about people using their
| credentials rather than real merits of their work to attempt
| to get a leg up when advertising their work. I covered my
| dissatisfaction about that in my post.
|
| Distill.pub for example, despite being written by people who
| worked at OpenAI and (also funded by) Google Brain, makes
| nearly no mention of either. They've managed to successfully
| accomplish their goal (creating resources to help people
| improve their intuition about machine learning) without
| resorting to those tactics.
| pvg wrote:
| _I covered my dissatisfaction about that in my post._
|
| A Show HN is not really the place to vent that
| dissatisfaction, though, at least not in that form. Take a
| look at:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
| [deleted]
| MathYouF wrote:
| I think the popularity of my post suggests it better
| represents the general sentiment of people who viewed the
| page than not, but I do accept the tone reflects my
| negative feelings towards the perceived
| credentialsim:substance ratio more than it does an
| impartial review of the content. Genuinely, feel free to
| remove the entirely of my thread if you think it is
| unproductive, I'm unable to edit it.
| pvg wrote:
| _I think the popularity of my post suggests_
|
| People upvote highly emotive stuff all the time even if
| it's at odds with HN's guidelines so whatever it
| suggests, it doesn't suggest the place on HN where people
| showcase their work is also the place for harangues.
| People like harangues! It's just not the subforum for
| them.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/12-steps-to-
| over...
| [deleted]
| andrewnc wrote:
| Thank you for the candid feedback! It's definitely appreciated
| and we'll take note
| wittycardio wrote:
| Uh credentials are good actually. The point of credentials is
| that they allow me to trust someone without being an expert
| myself. Of course if you are already an expert then you can
| look beyond credentials to determine whether someone knows what
| they're doing or not
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Did you mean the "I've worked at
| Google Brain and OpenAI" in the second para?
|
| Also, yeah, Distill is _amazing_! Every post is a work of art.
| Learned so much from it.
| MathYouF wrote:
| You can find the number of times each is mentioned (3) by
| using a page search (ctrl+f).
| boredemployee wrote:
| Not sure what's your intent with all that "pseudo constructive
| criticism" tone. And also, what's the point of sharing links
| that are completely out of the purpose of the post?
| MathYouF wrote:
| boredemployee wrote:
| Since you have such amount of free time, what about taking
| advantage of that and make a real contribution and proper
| feedback to this post.
| MathYouF wrote:
| I invited more positive and productive discussion on the
| advertised topic:
|
| >"I'd enjoy hearing some concrete discussion of _what
| unique vision you have for improving the intuition of
| people trying to do data science_ , and how this helps
| humanity, and your journey beyond A/B testing marketing
| techniques.
|
| So far i've not received it from any replies (including
| yours) and haven't seen it happen in any other comment
| threads so far (including ones which could be made by
| yourself).
|
| The lack of thoughtful discussion makes me believe this
| post is meant to be just a marketing/sales pitch
| (something I covered as a potential issue in my comment)
| rather than a post for having deep, thoughtful, expansive
| discussions on this topic.
|
| Like I said, I think you are perhaps the one who isn't in
| sync with what kind of conversations are valued.
| boredemployee wrote:
| whatever you say my man
| Uyuxo wrote:
| heyhihello wrote:
| I actually bought your book on Amazon and the book I received was
| insanely disappointing. Full of typo's, super wonky formatting,
| super short in depth and content, and the paper book was the
| lowest quality of any I've ever received from Amazon.
|
| I didn't leave a review because There weren't many and I didn't
| want to sour your sales with a 1-star, but I now kind of regret
| that.
|
| The course looks cool, but it honestly just feels like a
| monetizing attempt on something that really didn't deserve much
| money to begin with.
| andrewnc wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, I was hoping the course would be
| something of a redemption.
|
| I self published the book to prove I could do something like
| that. It got much more traction than I had planned and, in
| hindsight, I wish I had paid for editing and formatting as a
| minimum.
|
| As for the quality of the paperback, that was unfortunately out
| of my control as I used Amazon's print on demand services.
| Definitely a painful lesson for me.
|
| In any case, I appreciate this comment and others here. I'm
| definitely working towards much higher substance with increased
| polish. :)
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Hi! I wonder whether we could win you back with the course?
| We've reworked so much of the content, I hope you'd find those
| problems are gone! (Although the course is not on higher
| quality paper)
| in_cahoots wrote:
| Considering the OP's complaint pointed to a lack of effort
| and polish, this response doesn't really build trust in the
| product.
| Sebguer wrote:
| No real opinion but fwiw
|
| >(Although the course is not on higher quality paper)
|
| Is a joke, because this course isn't a book at all.
| heyhihello wrote:
| To be honest I'm just bot willing to spend money on another
| product of yours.
|
| This especially if it's a rehash of the same material (which
| maybe you missed in my previous comment, but I didn't find to
| be high-quality).
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Interesting course. I'm not sure if you're affiliated with
| tigyog.app owners or not, but 20% commission on paid courses is
| too much. The platform looks neat and interesting, but I wouldn't
| pay 20% of whatever I'm charging for a course to be able to use a
| platform that self describes as a "blog with buttons".
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| I feel the same way. I believe 20% is very reasonable if it
| drives traffic. So it's a chicken and egg problem. Right now,
| due to it not having much courses there, the value isn't there.
|
| Side note on nav UX. I expect a right click on logo to be able
| to open up the tigyog landing page, not save image dialog.
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Hi! I'm the solo developer of TigYog.app. I've been working
| with Andrew to build out the course. What percentage would you
| consider appropriate? It's set at 20% essentially because I
| have rent and bills to pay :-)
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| I get that, and I wish you the best with it. It's definitely
| interesting like I said. I'm not sure what financial model
| would make it seem less intimidating, but I'd imagine as a
| indie course-maker-on-the-side it'd be too expensive. Maybe a
| different pricing scheme for corporations.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| (not the person you're responding to) If you're offering
| free, perpetual hosting, I think it's worth 20% of sales for
| the creator (who doesn't know if they're even going to sell
| much, or if the material will become outdated and stop
| selling in a few years)
|
| I wondered how the creator of this course could guarantee the
| course would be available forever, and what a headache it
| must be to continue to maintain the hosting/content if sales
| taper off. Outsourcing that job to a service which is hosting
| _many_ such courses (and with new ones continually added)
| makes a lot more sense here, and of course you have bills to
| pay too. That 20% commission isn 't just covering the cost of
| time you put into the course builder and hosting _now_ , it
| covers hosting in perpetuity.
| civilized wrote:
| This is not intended as a criticism and, as an experienced data
| scientist, I'm probably not the target audience anyway. But
| just... how this hits me. There is a LOT of visual "decoration"
| and sales-y, pitchy stuff here that makes my eyes/brain glaze
| over from too much emotional stimulation. Maybe it has the
| opposite effect for others.
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Hi! What are the main things you'd remove? E.g. maybe we've
| gone too heavy with the illustrations, or sounds?
| civilized wrote:
| ...everything from the emojis on up? I think it's just not my
| vibe. But I'm sure you've done it this way because it works
| for a lot of other people.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| It sure as hell doesn't work on me. The kind of glib emoji-
| packed sales-slash-emotional priming spiel totally rubs me
| the wrong way.
|
| Everything here screams "we're sales people first, content
| people second" and that's not worth my time. I'll choose
| quiet confidence over showmanship.
| swyx wrote:
| no, your feeling is valid, you speak for the rest of us who
| are so turned off we dont even bother to tell him
| andrewnc wrote:
| I've been a long time fan of your content! Thanks all for
| these criticisms, we'll definitely take them to heart.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| First chapter was quite fun. I actually would have bought the
| course, but do not own a credit card. This is quite common
| outside of the US, if you could add PayPal it would be
| substantially more accessible.
| okasaki wrote:
| When places say "credit card", they really mean credit card or
| debit card. Either works.
| Tarq0n wrote:
| No, debit cards in most of the world do not function for
| remote transactions, even if they have a Mastercard or visa
| logo. My bank's cards for instance are Mastercard's "Maestro"
| product which is in-person and debit only, and has
| alternative infrastructure for online payments.
| jamesfisher wrote:
| Thanks! :-) That's a great point, I'll look at adding PayPal.
| (In the meantime, anyone in this situation: send me an email
| and I'll can sort something out for you! -
| jameshfisher@gmail.com)
| getup8 wrote:
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