Google has done a very cool thing. Roger Brittain and I have been talking, for quite some time, about the possibility of creating a Google University. One could take the courses online, similar to Open University and get a specialized certification or degree from the GOOG.
It seems like they are sloughing toward this. Showing, to any naysayers, that Roger and I are deeply connected to the zeitgeist.
Google is posting lectures from a Master’s level course called Statistical Aspects of Data Mining, or Stats 202. The lecturer, or “reader”, David Meese, is teaching the course at Stanford, and then he returns to Google to give the lectures for a second time. Google video records it and has been putting the videos online. You won’t get credit, but it is a nice way of making the world’s information online and accessible. Without being evil.
The course is very interesting but the text book