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List of best free online learning sites (reddit.com)
145 points by vijayr on Dec 19, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments


I highly recommend Leonard Susskind's "Modern Physics" series of lectures. A full list is on his wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskind

They cover modern classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, special relativity, statistical mechanics, and more. It is expected that you have knowledge of basic calculus (you know what a derivative is, but you don't need to know what a curl is) and basic physics (he does cover even stuff like F=ma but it would probably be too fast to follow it for the first time).


Another more actively maintained list of courses/lectures is available at Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses


Ive used Khan Academy to teach myself a few courses. Hes really good. I believe he was featured on ted.com as well. www.khanacademy.org


Would be nice if HN had a page/wiki to collect, categories, etc. these kinds of sites.


I'm a HUGE fan of memrise (www.memrise.com). Easy to use, clean interface, and a great concept. I've been using it to learn mandarin and have found it to be infinitely better than self-studying out of a textbook.

Check it out if you get a chance.


I've been an enthusiast of language learning (and teaching) for almost a decade. Memrise has an absolutely beautiful interface, and I love its responsiveness and colorfulness.

That said, you're doing yourself a serious disservice if you're using it for learning Mandarin. Aside from the considerable disadvantage of any language learning effort that focuses on single word flash cards to the exclusion of sentences, it propagates some misunderstandings specific to Mandarin. The most serious problem is that it treats single characters as "words", despite the fact that the vast majority of modern Chinese is disyllabic. The word for child is 孩子, not 子, which is found in hundreds of words that have nothing to do with children. Similarly used in isolation, 土 is as likely to mean provincial as it is to mean "earth" as taught in the series.

If you really want to learn, you'd be much better served by one of the services that gives you access to lots of audio, as well as flashcards done well. Try popupchinese or chinesepod. I really recommend the China Breeze series of graded readers, too.


Not sure what you're looking for but if you're a hacker MIT's Intro to CS & Programming...via OpenCourseWare http://bit.ly/mitintrocs


Here is my side project in this space http://classfrog.com/staging

Not ready for Show HN yet.


The title is misleading; not all of these resources are free.


Let's not forget thepiratebay.org and demonoid.me LOL


wish i could add www.trybloc.com to the list, looks like its closed for comments though :/


A lot of these links are expired. Wish there was an updated version of this.


Course material (lecture notes, projects, some have links to videos of lecture, &c). for every undergrad berkeley cs course is available for free if you know the website!

http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/classes-eecs.html has links to all course websites and archives.

you can look at what courses descriptions here: http://sis.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_nam...

the main courses are:

/cs61[abc]/ # intro cs

/cs70/ # discrete math

/ee122/ # networking with a cs bent in fall and an ee bent in spring

/cs160/ # ui

/cs161/ # security

/cs162/ # systems and os (not recommended right now; the class is going through a restructuring and completely sucks)

/cs164/ # compilers

/cs169/ # software engineering

/cs170/ # algorithms, this class usually doesn't have a website aside from homework assignments; i'd recommend just buying the textbook since its only $30 and the course very closely follows the entire text (save for the quantum chapter at the end)

/cs172/ # Computability and Complexity

/cs174/ # Combinatorics and Discrete Probability

/cs184/ # graphics

/cs186/ # databases

/cs188/ # AI

Lower division classes are numbered between 0 and 100, upper division classes are 100 to 199, and grad classes are 200 and up. A tens digit above 4 indicates a cs class, and a tens digit below five indicates an ee class.

To get to the archive for a class without having to navigate to the first link first, go to inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~<class>/archives if you want to go to the most recent website, just remove the /archives.

EG, cs61's website archive is at http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/archives and http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a will redirect to the most recent course's website.




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