[HN Gopher] Show HN: Learn time series with a story illustrated ...
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       Show HN: Learn time series with a story illustrated by Stable
       Diffusion
        
       We just published this tutorial about ARMA(p,q) models for modeling
       time series, and how to fit them using Python. But while it's a
       tutorial, it has a few twists. First, it's interactive: you'll
       learn by solving problems and making choices. Second, it's a story:
       you play a character in a plot that gives you real-life problems to
       solve. And third, it's illustrated: we spent many hours hacking
       with Stable Diffusion, GIMP, and matplotlib.  This is chapter 3 in
       our interactive course, Everyday Data Science. [1] The first half
       of the chapter is free. You can get the whole course forever for
       $29. These chapters are a lot of effort to produce, so please let
       us know what you think :-)  - Andrew Carr [2] and Jim Fisher [3]
       [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118530 [2]:
       https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr [3]: https://jameshfisher.com/
        
       Author : jamesfisher
       Score  : 79 points
       Date   : 2022-09-08 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (tigyog.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (tigyog.app)
        
       | redhal wrote:
       | I find it a little shady to wait for people to get to half the
       | course before requiring to buy it.
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | Indeed, especially at an eye popping $30 an hour or so for
         | content.
        
           | jamesfisher wrote:
           | Hi, it's actually $29 for the entire course, of which this
           | post is just one chapter. Was there some content that
           | suggested it was $29 for just this chapter? I need to fix
           | that if so!
        
             | sliken wrote:
             | Ah, that's a surprise. It went from 0 to 46% then it popped
             | a "buy me" dialog, I had assumed it was $29 the 47-100%. I
             | only took 10-20 minutes and seemed pretty pricey for
             | another 10-20 minutes. Maybe add a "$29 for this course/N
             | chapters" or "$29 for a course and show the syllabus".
        
               | jamesfisher wrote:
               | Thanks for the reply! I can see now that it's not super
               | clear. I might assume the same thing at first sight. I'll
               | see what I can do to clarify it.
        
         | zorgmonkey wrote:
         | It is effectively a free trial of the course, which seems fine
         | as long as it is disclosed upfront that the rest of the content
         | is paid.
         | 
         | Edit: after actually using the site I see your point, the only
         | indicator is the small text "free preview" which I probably
         | wouldn't have noticed without first having read the Show HN
         | post.
        
         | jamesfisher wrote:
         | Hi! Do you think there's any way we can make it clearer what's
         | going on? I put "free preview" at the top, but perhaps it can
         | be easily missed.
        
           | merlincorey wrote:
           | I also didn't notice the "Free Preview" on the progress bar
           | until reading about it in this thread.
           | 
           | As distasteful as it may be, an actual heading or otherwise
           | strongly formatted text note near the top should suffice for
           | most people.
        
           | StrictDabbler wrote:
           | It looks like you cut the preview from 46% of this chapter to
           | just 22% of the chapter... I went back to look for a quote
           | from about 41% of the way through to explain to another
           | commenter why the style is so effective and ran into the
           | paywall earlier than I had my first time through. Just FYI,
           | the content before 22% isn't strong enough to sell the
           | preview. It has to get to the questions where you're asking
           | for intuitive guesses on the real mathematical expressions to
           | make it clear how valuable this is.
           | 
           | Honestly, you should just be giving away this whole chapter.
           | If you did then I could forward it to colleagues, let them
           | learn this one concept and suggest they get the rest of the
           | info.
           | 
           | As it is I really can't do that. It'd be like giving a friend
           | a flyer that was shoved under my door.
        
       | fudged71 wrote:
       | Very cool. Are these interactive stories created with Twine?
        
       | StrictDabbler wrote:
       | I find myself irritated by how effective this method of
       | instruction is.
       | 
       | I'm not sure which is more annoying:
       | 
       | -going through years of education in pure mathematics without
       | this kind of tutorial
       | 
       | -not having come up with this method myself, when it's _so close_
       | to the dumbed-down edutainment software of the 90 's
       | 
       | Every university course should start with at least a day of
       | instruction written in this style.
       | 
       | [kicks dirt]
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | Heh, indeed, the similarly effective method if gamification.
         | Even relatively "dry" things like algebra can be gamified,
         | Dragonbox is a good example. From my limited experience (1
         | kid), it works really well.
        
         | eutectic wrote:
         | Not to be rude, but I found it a bit infantilizing. I would
         | rather just have the information.
        
           | StrictDabbler wrote:
           | That's fair in a sense but it also looks like they moved the
           | preview paywall much earlier in the chapter, 22% instead of
           | 46%.
           | 
           | Towards the middle of the chapter they start asking intuitive
           | questions about how coefficients in the power-series map to
           | the real-life concepts they've been discussing "childishly"
           | up until then.
           | 
           | It's a major turning point and I wonder if you just didn't
           | get the opportunity to see that shift. It's infantilizing
           | right up until it isn't.
        
         | garren wrote:
         | A product that takes a similar approach is: "A Curious Moon" @
         | BigMachine [0]
         | 
         | It's not an intro to time series or data analysis, but it's a
         | great intro to Postgres, db administration, and etl that
         | follows a fun and compelling storyline. The presentation is
         | different, but the "edutainment" style is similar.
         | 
         | [0] https://bigmachine.io/products/a-curious-moon/
        
           | werzum wrote:
           | I love this type of education - do you know where I can find
           | more content like that? I really have trouble finding stuff
           | like this just by Googling; rather, I seem to stumble over it
           | from time to time.
        
       | sophie_l wrote:
       | Nice storytelling, and I love the images!
        
       | iandanforth wrote:
       | How did you get Stable Diffusion to write 'congo.com' on multiple
       | boxes correctly? I have to assume there was gimp editing and then
       | blending?
        
         | jamesfisher wrote:
         | Yeah, I used the perspective tool in GIMP for that. That was
         | the main bit of "editing in post".
         | 
         | I was saying earlier, it would be cool if there was an ML tool
         | for adding/modifying text in images. Similar to how there are
         | additional tools for fixing faces, super resolution, and so on.
        
       | mikejulietbravo wrote:
       | This is really cool! We'd love to help you turn this into a
       | Lightning App if you'd be interested
        
         | mikejulietbravo wrote:
         | Lightning App = Hosted version of this with a full UI attached.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-08 23:01 UTC)