米スタンフォード大学が「テクノロジー起業」「SaaSのためのソフトウェア工学」「ヒトとコンピュータの対話」など無償オンラインの新講座を2012年1月から開始

米スタンフォード大学は、来年1月と2月に新しく開講するコンピュータ関連のオンライン講座について申し込みを開始しました。誰でも無料で受講できます。

新講座には魅力的なタイトルがずらりと並んでいます。例えばスタートアップに興味がある方には「Technology Entrepreneurship」や「The Lean Launchpad」などの講座に申し込みたくなるでしょうし、「Software Engineering for Software as a Service」の講座ではRuby on Railsでアジャイル開発を教えるというのですから、クラウドの開発者でなくとも興味がわくのではないでしょうか。

さらに、「Human-Computer Interaction」の講座も、ユーザーインターフェイスやユーザー体験に興味のあるデザイナー、プログラマーならぜひとも受けてみたいはず。以下に、そんな講座の一覧を並べてみました。講座の説明は、ポイントと思われるところを抜き出しました。

米スタンフォード大学のオンライン講座

Technology Entrepreneurship
テクノロジー起業家精神／2012年1月開講

How do you create a successful start-up? What is entrepreneurial leadership in a large firm? What are the differences between an idea and true opportunity? How does an entrepreneur form a team and gather the resources necessary to create a great enterprise? This class mixes in-depth case studies and research on the entrepreneurial process.

The Lean Launchpad
無駄のない創業／2012年2月開講

This class is not about how to write a business plan. It's not an exercise on how smart you are in a classroom, or how well you use the research library. The end result is not a PowerPoint slide deck for a VC presentation. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works.

Software Engineering for Software as a Service
SaaSのためのソフトウェア工学／2012年2月開講

This course teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived software using the highly-productive Agile development method for Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails. Agile developers continuously refine and refactor a working but incomplete prototype until the customer is happy with result, with the customer offering continuous feedback.

Human-Computer Interaction
ヒトとコンピュータの対話／2012年1月開講

In this course, you will learn how to design technologies that bring people joy, rather than frustration. You'll learn several techniques for rapidly prototyping and evaluating multiple interface alternatives — and why rapid prototyping and comparative evaluation are essential to excellent interaction design. You'll learn how to conduct fieldwork with people to help you get design ideas.

Machine Learning
機械学習／2012年1月開講

This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition. Topics include: (i) Supervised learning (parametric/non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks). (ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning). (iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias/variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI).

Natural Language Processing
自然言語処理／2012年1月開講

The course covers a broad range of topics in natural language processing, including word and sentence tokenization, text classification and sentiment analysis, spelling correction, information extraction, parsing, meaning extraction, and question answering, We will also introduce the underlying theory from probability, statistics, and machine learning that are crucial for the field, and cover fundamental algorithms like n-gram language modeling, naive bayes and maxent classifiers, sequence models like Hidden Markov Models, probabilistic dependency and constituent parsing, and vector-space models of meaning.

Computer Security
コンピュータセキュリティ／2012年2月開講

In this class you will learn how to design secure systems and write secure code. You will learn how to find vulnerabilities in code and how to design software systems that limit the impact of security vulnerabilities. We will focus on principles for building secure systems and give many real world examples.

Cryptography
暗号／2012年1月開講

This course explains the inner workings of cryptographic primitives and how to correctly use them. Students will learn how to reason about the security of cryptographic constructions and how to apply this knowledge to real-world applications. The course begins with a detailed discussion of how two parties who have a shared secret key can communicate securely when a powerful adversary eavesdrops and tampers with traffic.

Information Theory
情報理論／2012年3月開講

Our course will explore the basic concepts of Information theory. It is a prerequisite for research in this area, and highly recommended for students planning to delve into the fields of communications, data compression, and statistical signal processing. The intimate acquaintance that we will gain with measures of information and uncertainty - such as mutual information, entropy, and relative entropy - would be invaluable also for students, researchers, and practitioners in fields ranging from neuroscience to machine learning.

Game Theory
ゲーム理論／2012年2月開講

How could you begin to model eBay, Google keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them? The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We'll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications.

Design and Analysis of Algorithms I
アルゴリズムの設計と分析／2012年1月開講

In this course you will learn several fundamental principles of algorithm design. You'll learn the divide-and-conquer design paradigm, with applications to fast sorting, searching, and multiplication. You'll learn several blazingly fast primitives for computing on graphs, such as how to compute connectivity information and shortest paths. Finally, we'll study how allowing the computer to "flip coins" can lead to elegant and practical algorithms and data structures.

Probabilistic Graphical Models
確率論的グラフィカルモデル／2012年1月開講

While probability theory has existed since the 17th century, our ability to use it effectively on large problems involving many inter-related variables is fairly recent, and is due largely to the development of a framework known as Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs). This framework, which spans methods such as Bayesian networks and Markov random fields, uses ideas from discrete data structures in computer science to efficiently encode and manipulate probability distributions over high-dimensional spaces, often involving hundreds or even many thousands of variables.

Computer Science 101
コンピュータサイエンス入門／2012年2月開講

In CS101, students play and experiment with short bits of "computer code" to bring to life to the power and limitations of computers. Everything works within the browser, so there is no extra software to download or install. CS101 also provides a general background on computers today: what is a computer, what is hardware, what is software, what is the internet.