Yesterday I took my first online class in the neural networks class offered by Coursera. I took a set of machine learning classes when I was working on my masters degree at Rensselaer, and I always found neural networks interesting. Unfortunately our course material never required us to actually create a network, so neural nets were never more than an academic interest for me.
Fortunately, I recognized the name of the instructor for this course when I read the description. Geoffrey Hinton is a leading name in the area of neural networks, and he was referenced many times in the readings that I had for my masters classes years ago. This is my chance to actually lay hands on a neural network, and learn from a leading thinker in the area.
My experience with Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is pretty limited right now, but my first impression is positive. The Coursera site is well constructed and easy to use. I would recommend it to anyone thinking about taking a class.
The long term goal here is to really learn how to implement neural networks, and then move them onto the Raspberry Pi bramble I'm in the middle of creating. These networks are inherently parallel beasts, so it should be an interesting exercise.
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