Hidden Video Courses in Math, Science, and Engineering

Posted by Peter Skomoroch on April 09th 2008 to Machine learning, Neuroscience, physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Lifehacks, Education

Over the last few years, a large number of open courseware directories and video lecture aggregators have popped up on the web. These sites often include introductory courses and research seminars, but it can be difficult to find full courses covering advanced topics. For budgetary and copyright reasons, most upper level and smaller attendance courses are not recorded, or are only offered online for a fee. Many schools provide access-restricted videos of advanced courses to current students, but do not make them available to the wider community. To help remedy this, I have pulled together a big list of advanced courses with publicly available video lectures in math, physics, finance, and computer science that seem to have slipped through the cracks and included them in this post (scroll down to skip to the links).

Book Burnout at MIT What motivated me to pull this together? Like many people who are working full time while taking grad courses, blogging, or burning the midnight oil on a startup, I looked up after a couple of years to find I had gained a bunch of weight and was no longer in the best shape of my life. I had too much to do, and couldn’t tear myself away from coding every day for a couple of hours at the gym. In addition to my gym problem, I had just moved to DC and missed the huge number of courses available in the Boston area. It is difficult to find advanced math and physics courses that fit into a full time work schedule. Being a geek, my first instinct was to look for a technical solution to non-technical problems.

The approach I came up with was to load an Archos video player with video lectures from the web (an iphone would probably work just as well). After 3 months of watching machine learning lectures while on the elliptical machine, I had lost 30 lbs and learned a few things at the same time. The motivation problems for self-study using open courseware videos are a lot like those with working out: you really intend to do something to improve yourself, but you never seem to find the time. Somehow putting the two together and forcing myself to get things done appealed to the part of my brain which seeks extreme efficiency.

forcing yourself to learn something
Most video players now come with wifi built in, so if you have wireless access at your gym you should be ready to go. If you need to download the videos, then depending on the copyright of the author you can use mplayer or other linux utilities to rip the stream and encode it appropriately. Check out my del.icio.us video streaming links for details.
There was a lot of buzz last week about the pace of technology causing bloggers to sacrifice health for work, but this might be a way for technology to actually help improve the situation. You can force yourself to watch some video lectures and get back in shape at the same time…

Enough motivation, on with the links:

Links to Advanced Courses with Complete Video Lectures:

See http://del.icio.us/pskomoroch/video+lectures to find updated links for complete courses…this list is mostly composed of courses I hadn’t seen in other directories, but includes links to some of the better Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT videos as well.

Update (02/10/09): I’ve bookmarked 20 new video courses since the original post was published on April 09, 2008. The new video links have been added to the sections below and are in bold type.

Physics

Mathematics

Computer Science & Engineering

Machine Learning

Neuroscience & Biology

Finance and Econometrics

Seminars, Talks, and Conference Videos:

See http://del.icio.us/pskomoroch/talk+video for more links…

Physics

Mathematics

Computer Science & Engineering

Machine Learning

Neuroscience & Biology

Finance and Economics

Open Courseware Directories and Other Video Lecture Roundup Posts

  • kittipat kampa
    Thank you very much for your great effort. Really appreciate!
  • Dave
    O one more. http://iracema.icsl.ucla.edu/index.php?option=c.... Its an adaptive filters class at UCLA.... Looks awesome.
  • pskomoroch
    Thanks Dave, those are great links!
  • Dave
    Hey thanks for compiling this list. I have one to add http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmpe241/Winter08/. Its intro to feedback control at UC Santa Cruz. If anyone could find a course on stochastic signal analysis and random process that would be really cool.
  • suchit sharma

    Thank you very much.I am a Btech Computer Science student and this site is one of my favorites.It has been a great help for me.

  • Hi I love your site, I added it to my favorites, Ill be visiting regularly.

  • This is a great list. I've forwarded it on to coworkers and many others, posted it to Twitter, etc. Working my way through the Stanford and UCB machine learning stuff myself. Thanks and happy new year!

  • Great site. Please update one of your weblinks for UCCS math courses from


    http://www.uccs.edu/~math/video/index.php


    to:


    http://www.uccs.edu/~math/vidarchive.html

  • swipe163

    Hi, the following video lectures become unavailable
    CS 251: Intermediate Software Design with C++ - Vanderbilt University


    Who have one copy and share with me? I really appreciate your help

  • Pradeep

    Thanks for compiling the list of courses! I was looking for some math courses, and you have a pretty good list here. You may also want to check out this website: http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/videocourselist.php. There are about 50 courses available right now, and the list is growing. The same material is also available on Youtube - just search for nptel.....

  • Bill Varenas

    Thank you so much for the videos!!! They are a great supplement to my course lectures! Please notify me as soon as more become available! Thanks again.


                                          Bill Varenas

  • @Shubhendu


    The shot shows the character of Alex (Malcolm McDowell) essentially forcing himself to learn something: they have him strapped down in a movie theater with his eyes held open while a series of "educational" movies are being displayed. For anyone reading this who hasn't seen the movie, you should check it out. One of the main themes explores nature vs. nurture, whether the mind is a blank slate, and learning in general.


    from wikipedia:


    "Alex hears about an experimental rehabilitation programme called "the Ludovico Technique", which promises that the prisoner will be released upon completion of the two-week treatment, and will not commit crimes afterwards."


    Alex "volunteered" to watch these disturbing movies to improve himself (really just to get out of prison), so I thought it was an extreme way to display the post's theme of forcing yourself to watch educational video lectures at the gym.


    -Pete

  • Peter,
    Just curious and if i can ask. Is there any specific reason you put that shot from the A Clockwork Orange in the post. It got me thinking right away to establish a connection.
    Cheers
    - S

  • Great post ... I manage technical education for a Fortune 100 company. Folks may be interested in visiting my engineering learning wiki which list similar resources. Click upon my name for access.

  • learner

    That is a great list. Thank you very much.
    You can find one more great source at http://freevideolectures.com/</p>

  • Rossi

    Thanks for your compliling and motivation. It motivated me.

  • rick

    Thanks a ton

  • Matrix67,


    I haven't used it in a while, but the performance of Google translate on your site is amazing...


    Translated blog post


    -Pete

  • God bless you for taking the time to gather these links and post them. This is a treasure trove of information, for those of us that cannot find their way into a college yet (for all kinds of reasons).

  • This is super-fantastic!


    Thanks for linking to my Free Science Online blog in the first place!


    I have been collecting video lectures for around 3 years now, and I found so many new video lecture courses! Holy smokes!


    Sincerely,
    Peteris Krumins

  • vi

    thanks for the compilation(:

  • Wow!


    Prescient, voluminous, and most of it currently way over my head. I love it!

  • Cass

    Great list of resources. I was familiar with the Berkeley and MIT OCW resources but I had not found anything beyond that. I am especially appreciative of the functional analysis and dynamical systems lectures.


    Cheers

  • Nice list. Specially the "Computer Science & Engineering" section.

  • Thanks for compiling this resource. Eventually I will work my way though it all :-)

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