Interactive course about “everyday” data science

[andrewnc]

Last year, I wrote the book Everyday Data Science. It was #1 on HN! [1]

This year, I've been working with Jim Fisher on a new kind of interactive course. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure, except you'll learn Thompson sampling, differential equations, and Bayesian-optimal pricing.

After several months, the first two chapters are ready! Every word, button, and sound has been painstakingly crafted. Try out the first chapter to see what we mean! [2]

The course will be $99, but it’s $29 today, as a thanks for helping us build the next 8 chapters! Let us know what you think :-)

- Andrew Carr [3]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253281 [2]: https://tigyog.app/d/L:X07z8laLyz/r/when-life-gives-you-lemo... [3]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr

[civilized]

This is not intended as a criticism and, as an experienced data scientist, I'm probably not the target audience anyway. But just... how this hits me. There is a LOT of visual "decoration" and sales-y, pitchy stuff here that makes my eyes/brain glaze over from too much emotional stimulation. Maybe it has the opposite effect for others.

[jamesfisher]

Hi! What are the main things you'd remove? E.g. maybe we've gone too heavy with the illustrations, or sounds?

[jamesfisher]

Everyday Data Science is the first course on TigYog [1], a platform I'm building. Most courses are video-based, but TigYog courses are more like books. The only addition is multiple-choice buttons with responses. This lets you simulate the tight feedback loop you’d have with a private tutor.

Andrew's writing shows off what you can make with this medium. It's a bit like blogging. Try it out and let me know how it goes! (Currently it’s a WYSIWYG editor, though I’m also working on a Markdown+git interface. Let me know if you’re interested.)

- Jim Fisher [2]

P.S.: Thanks to one user reporting an Apple Pay UI glitch. I'm on it! In the meantime, ordinary Stripe card payment should work.

[1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/

[lagrange77]

> [1]: https://tigyog.app/ [2]: https://jameshfisher.com/

I like your style!

[bakuninsbart]

First chapter was quite fun. I actually would have bought the course, but do not own a credit card. This is quite common outside of the US, if you could add PayPal it would be substantially more accessible.

[jamesfisher]

Thanks! :-) That's a great point, I'll look at adding PayPal. (In the meantime, anyone in this situation: send me an email and I'll can sort something out for you! - [e-mail])

[okasaki]

When places say "credit card", they really mean credit card or debit card. Either works.

[pella]

meta question:

Expecting this post is an "A/B Testing"

Q: Which group am I actually in now? Is this group "A" or "B" ?

:-)

[jamesfisher]

Haha!! Excellent question. So this is our fourth round of testing messages. We didn't want to A/B on HN cause that kinda feels disingenuous! But we've definitely been crunching things like conversion rates.

(Edit: this comment is a stupid meta-meta-joke, please ignore :-)

[andrewnc]

Ha!! Great question, so this is our fourth round of message testing. We didn't want to A/B directly on HN cause that feels kinda disingenuous, but we've definitely been crunching conversion rates and such.

[ichverstehe]

I just spent half an hour in an airport reading the first chapter. With only a bit of knowledge of Bernoulli distributions, I found it very informative and well written, moving forward at a nice pace. The tiny tests made me reread a few things I had glossed over initially, forcing me to understand it a little better. Good job.

It would be cool if you provided links to further reading on the various concepts, for extracurricular studies.

Overall the style and ethos feels similar to Pluto.jl, which I think puts you in good company :)

Bonus points for working almost flawlessly on mobile (the table with 0’s and 1’s overflowed and was pushed offscreen.)

[jamesfisher]

Thank you! I thought "I've never heard of Pluto.jl", but then realized I've seen it a lot in that course by Grant Sanderson! At some point TigYog will have interactivity like that :)

Good spot on the table. I'll edit the example to fit, and make math blocks scroll more nicely if they overflow.

[heyhihello]

I actually bought your book on Amazon and the book I received was insanely disappointing. Full of typo’s, super wonky formatting, super short in depth and content, and the paper book was the lowest quality of any I’ve ever received from Amazon.

I didn’t leave a review because There weren’t many and I didn’t want to sour your sales with a 1-star, but I now kind of regret that.

The course looks cool, but it honestly just feels like a monetizing attempt on something that really didn’t deserve much money to begin with.

[andrewnc]

Thanks for the feedback, I was hoping the course would be something of a redemption.

I self published the book to prove I could do something like that. It got much more traction than I had planned and, in hindsight, I wish I had paid for editing and formatting as a minimum.

As for the quality of the paperback, that was unfortunately out of my control as I used Amazon's print on demand services. Definitely a painful lesson for me.

In any case, I appreciate this comment and others here. I'm definitely working towards much higher substance with increased polish. :)

[jamesfisher]

Hi! I wonder whether we could win you back with the course? We've reworked so much of the content, I hope you'd find those problems are gone! (Although the course is not on higher quality paper)

[aleughan]

I didn't want to make an empty comment, but simply - thanks!

[yessirwhatever]

Interesting course. I'm not sure if you're affiliated with tigyog.app owners or not, but 20% commission on paid courses is too much. The platform looks neat and interesting, but I wouldn't pay 20% of whatever I'm charging for a course to be able to use a platform that self describes as a "blog with buttons".

[jamesfisher]

Hi! I'm the solo developer of TigYog.app. I've been working with Andrew to build out the course. What percentage would you consider appropriate? It's set at 20% essentially because I have rent and bills to pay :-)

[asicsp]

I'd assume 20% covers payment processing fees, collecting VAT/etc where appropriate, and so on.

As a comparison, Leanpub charges 20% for books/courses (not sure if those courses are on par with the features offered by tigyog). You'd get better pricing with Gumroad, but no interactive features on that platform. 20% is more than fair in my opinion.

[fuzzythinker]

I feel the same way. I believe 20% is very reasonable if it drives traffic. So it's a chicken and egg problem. Right now, due to it not having much courses there, the value isn't there.

Side note on nav UX. I expect a right click on logo to be able to open up the tigyog landing page, not save image dialog.

[boredemployee]

Not sure what's your intent with all that "pseudo constructive criticism" tone. And also, what's the point of sharing links that are completely out of the purpose of the post?

[yessirwhatever]

Your comment comes off bitter. You could just provide additional links for those interested, and/or not read/buy the course if you're not interested. Whatever is upsetting you is not this.

[jamesfisher]

Thanks for the feedback! Did you mean the "I’ve worked at Google Brain and OpenAI" in the second para?

Also, yeah, Distill is amazing! Every post is a work of art. Learned so much from it.

[andrewnc]

Thank you for the candid feedback! It's definitely appreciated and we'll take note

[wittycardio]

Uh credentials are good actually. The point of credentials is that they allow me to trust someone without being an expert myself. Of course if you are already an expert then you can look beyond credentials to determine whether someone knows what they're doing or not