Upcoming courses

Courses that I've registered for, but which haven't started yet

(and that, therefore, I may drop or unregister from at any moment.)

Coursera − University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign − Emergence of Life

It looks like a summary of the history and phylogeny of life − the kind of thing I'm capable of losing hours reading up on Wikipedia. Besides, UI-UC is the academic home of Carl Woese, the inventor of the modern three-domain system (with life divided in Bacteria, Archea, and Eukaryotes).

FutureLearn − University of Edinburgh − Towards Scottish Independence?

The Scottish independence referendum has been described as potentially the most significant political event in Europe this year − more than the elections which saw the far right make huge gains in the Euro parliament, more than the election of a Western-leaning president in Ukraine, even more than the Catalan independence referendum later this year (because that one isn't binding).

Now, while I've only actually been there once, I have a fondness for Scotland, where my grandfather was born and where some of the world's best writers hail or hailed from (Iain Banks, Ken Macleod, Charles Stross…) That's not enough to make me qualified to have an opinion, but it is more than enough to make me interested − especially as the gap in the polls between Yes and No is steadily closing, which means the actual vote could very well go either way.

This course starts just three weeks before the vote; it will first sum up the issues, and then discuss the results.

Coursera − Duke University − Data Analysis and Statistical Inference

Because I liked 15.071x The Analytics Edge and would like to go further. Besides, it also integrates statistics, which I've been studying at Berkeley (Stat 2x), and it's nice to see many parts come together.
Finally, the Duke “Reasoning, Data analysis and Writing” specialization is intriguing. I guess this Data analysis course is the closest to my current skillset, so it might well be the best entry point to the specialization.

I've generally found Coursera classes to be of a lower overall quality than comparable edX ones (mostly because the evaluation systems seem to be limited to basic quizzes and peer-reviewed work). So I don't want to raise my expectations too much to avoid being disappointed. Anyway; we'll see on September 1st and the following 10 weeks.


Coursera − Duke University − Introductory Human Physiology

I've given up on the idea of taking Mount Sinai's Systems Biology specialization, so I'm using Physiology as a fallback. But that's not a good way of seeing this; I guess I'm more suited to a top-down, breadth-first investigation of a field than a bottom-up, depth-first one. So; physiology is the study of organ systems, basically I view it as an engineer's way of doing biology and medicine: a complete animal body is a hugely difficult system, so let's cut that up (urgh, not literally − that's anatomy classes) into a number of smaller systems, easier to understand. So you've got the respiratory system, the endocrine system, etc.

In computer science, it's called “divide and conquer” − when faced with a large, intractable problem, divide it in smaller, more tractable problems until you can solve all of them, then solve the interactions between the subsystems. It's an approach that I find very natural. I hope it works for me in this field.

Coincidentally enough, it starts at the same time as the Data analysis class from the same university, and lasts just one week longer.

Coursera − Brown University − Exploring Neural Data

Bit of an outlier, this one. It's neurology through programming and data analysis. Should suit me fine, from September 1st during 10 weeks.

edX − Karolinska Institutet − Explore statistics with R

On the face of it, this course is unnecessary, and doubles with both the MIT 15.071x Analytics introduction I just finished and the Duke Data analysis course that runs at the same time. So it's likely I'll drop it after a week or so.
But… I have a particular attachment to KI, because I used to live and work pretty close to their main Stockholm campus. (I'd love to hear a Swedish accent again, too.) Besides, the idea of applying my nascent R skills on healthcare data is a big plus. So, that starts on September 9th and lasts for 5 weeks.

Coursera − University of Alberta − Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology

Who doesn't like dinosaurs?
It'll be my first course from a Canadian University. Uh, I guess I'm excited? Anyway, I don't really expect this course to be intensive (and if it is, then I'll just audit).
Starts on September 6th, for 12 full weeks.

edX − TU Delft − Technology for Biobased Products

I may have turned to computer science and I may be eyeing biology, but I'm still basically an engineer; and I firmly believe the future will include much bio-based technology (not so much “biotechnology” as in creating blue carrots or an engineered virus to kill cancerous cells, but “biotechnology” in the sense of using GM bacteria to produce human insulin, or using various biochemical processes to create bio-plastics from orange peels or whatever). I've even written a novel about it (which, fingers crossed, may find a publisher someday).

So, this course sounds interesting. Starts in October for two months; it may be overly intensive, we'll have to see about doing it to the end.

edX − Rice − Fundamentals of Immunology part 2

Because I did part 1, and did quite well, thank you. So yeah, obviously, I'll do part 2 when it starts on October 20th. It's supposed to be the same 7-week format as part 1, which suits me fine.

edX − Harvard − AT1x Musculoskeletal Anatomy

Hum. Yeah, I'll plead guilty to taking almost every biology/health/medicine course I can find on edX. No, I don't want to become a doctor. I'm too old anyway to enter med school. It's just that… well, it's interesting stuff, and besides, I have too many dealings with doctors (for myself, for my son, etc.); I want to be able to speak to them on their own terms.
So. This course on anatomy… sounds like each week will be a House MD episode: a patient comes with a complaint, and “we” have to understand what's going on. The course intro text and video make it very clear that they consider cadaver dissections to be an integral (and obligatory) part of learning anatomy; so I'm both wondering whether I'll have the guts to go through (but I guess that'll be okay), and whether it will be okay / acceptable to watch the lectures on the bus, commuter train, and intercity fast train as I normally do. If it's not, it'll be a challenge (I can't really do this at home in daytime either with a 4-year-old running around very interested in everything I'm doing, so that leaves the evenings only…)
Anyway, that'll last for 8 weeks, and it's slated for “Q3 2014”, whatever that means.

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